Old World Blues
by SpaceAgeToaster
Summary: Tristram Shandy lives in the shell of a burnt-out helicopter, travelling the dangerous wasteland collecting books written before nuclear war. On the journey he encounters remnants of the old world finding its way into the new one. The ideas, politics, philosophy, symbols, religion and crime, and the men and women who are at the forefront of bringing it all back.
1. Chapter 1

To Gunter. Keep reaching for that rainbow.

Excerpt from: Speak, Memory – Vladimir Nabokov

"_The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. _

_Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour). _

_I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. He saw a world that was practically unchanged-the same house, the same people-and then realized that he did not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence. He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs window, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell. _

_But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the smug, encroaching air of a coffin; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated."_

1

Tristram Shandy woke up and smelled the ashes. In a hole in the ground, in the shell of a burned out helicopter, he made his home. Raw and engine black, there was almost nothing left. Bare remnants of side doors he could pull aside was all that protected him from the harsh elements of the wasteland.

Walking up a nearby hill to get his head right in the morning, Tristram stood and watched over a valley of defilement. Trees stripped clean, most knocked over and rotting. The sun beat down hard against old rags he had wrapped around his face to protect from radiating winds and dust. The Earth continued to spin, and with it its oceans, but in America's capital there was scarcely anything natural left. An ocean of bone dust. The fossil of industrial civilisation. All very bleak. Best not to think about it.

He bent double and coughed into his fist. The edges of hair were greying and thinned, his eyes dug deep into his face. The skin of his hands stretched tight. His face was long and worn, but he had arms like a blacksmith. For a man to survive so long in the Capital Wasteland and not succumb to it was rare. An anachronism.

Back in the helicopter, Shandy turned on the radio. Through static, In The Mood by The Andrews Sisters played. Appreciating the upbeat sounds, he danced in what little space he had. He wiped the grease and dust from his mirror mounted on the wall and reached for a straight razor. Shaving cream was long extinct, but he made do. A hot oiled rag could work wonders, or so he assumed. Good razor blades were on their way to becoming an endangered species as well.

"I must make a note of that," he said to no one. "Find more razor blades."

But those were secondary on his shopping list. He made knowledge the priority. Pre war books. Most that he found were old and worn and falling apart past the point of unreadable. Those he did find he packed away as best he could, to preserve them for the future. What little future there was, Tristram couldn't say.

"Hey Tristram, what kind of future is there?" an old friend would ask.

"Fuck if I know," he'd say in return.

And fuck if he did know. He had been born in the wasteland, and he would die in the wasteland. That was not up for debate. That was life. He heard legends of civilisations more sufficiently redeveloped, far off in west somewhere. But those were only rumours. There were others rumours, too. Rumours of book depositories filled to the brim with pre war knowledge. Locked away forever. If only he could get to them. The new world had need of them, not the old.

He would have enough to start a library in Junktown or Oldtown, or deep in the hull of The Black Freighter. A place to regather information and to learn again. In the capital wasteland no one really knew anything. One day guns and scrap iron would run dry and everyone will raise their collective shoulders and shrug about what to do next.

He continued to boogie. "Aww yeah."

The song faded away. Tristram continued to boogie to nothing until the next song, Come and Get Your Love by Redbone. One of the most modern songs in the world of pre war music.

Outside he heard deep, guttural snarling. Placing a hand over the open doorway, he lowered his head and stepped out into the world. He couldn't decide on his favourite part of his self proclaimed property. The brown hill, the greyish muddy lake, or the other brown hill.

On his second brown hill a wild dog was yelping and dancing around another animal. A mole rat. Huge radioactive bastards, dumb as a mule and twice as ugly. They had fangs, and Tristram didn't think that was righteous at all. Though dangerous to the inexperienced, both the dog, with its skin burned and melted away from radiation sickness, and the mole rat, were mere inconveniences. Shame to waste two good bullets on them. Best let the two sort out their differences with fisticuffs, then kill and eat the survivor.

"Now that's good eatin'," he said, licking his lips.

Stepping back inside, his eyes flicked to the wall near the cockpit, caked in ash. A map had been stuck to it, with light pencil scratchings. If only he could find an eraser. Dancing over, he examined it. It was pre nuclear holocaust but marked with capital wasteland features.

Looking over the lay of the land, he considered it, stroking his freshly-shaven chin. Some of the wasteland you can run from, you can flee, or you can bring a big gun with very powerful ammo big as you like. And you shall fear no evil, because you carry a gun. But the wasteland is a pit. In time you are stripped of your weapons and armour, an old jumpsuit, deceased ammo, and nothing to do but to traverse the poisonous, health leeching hell without succumbing to the horrors within. All you own strapped to your back, wandering without reprieve and then you die. All very bleak. Best not to think about it.

"Where to next?" he asked, drawing a long finger over flimsy paper. "What do you think Günter? GÜNTER?!"

Günter did not respond. Because he was dead. He had been for quite some time. A skeleton in the cockpit. He wore a round helmet with over sized goggles resting on the crown and coated in a thick later of dust. Arms limp by his side, Günter sat in the pilot's seat. Tristram was mostly sane, but only entertained the idea of Günter because it made him laugh, and Günter was good company anyway.

The song flicked over again to a smooth saxophone. Junktown was the logical destination. But he could go wherever he chose in his quest to preserve the old world. Wherever he chose.


	2. Chapter 2

2

He ate dog and mole rat for breakfast, burnt black over a fire pit outside his helicopter. Dirty water from a glass bottle to wash it down. Imagining that mole rate was bacon proved easy, because he didn't know what fabled bacon actually tasted like. And the water was whiskey sour.

Tristram slung a faded grey duffel bag over one shoulder and started off through the trees. He had left the radio on. Hopefully a would-be scavenger would be deterred and think someone was home. Plus Günter liked to listen to the music and if Tristram didn't leave it on, Günter would get agitated and he didn't want to come home to that mess.

He passed along the edge of a river that ran parallel to the road. Tristram made a mental note to look both ways first. A wooden sign attached to a red iron post stood solitary by the river of stagnant, irradiated water. It was surprisingly clear – most of the time it was the colour of runny poop. The words on the sign were painted in scratchy writing, thin and black letters reading "THE END IS NIGH."

"Well spotted Eagle-Eye."

Across the wastes he moved, only spying the occasional raven flitting through the trees. That was only when he could see more than one tree at a given moment. He saw the remains of Highway 95. A long overpass, held in place by great pillars that stood the test of time and nuclear war. Most of them, anyway. Parts of the highway had crumbled away into the river. The rest was cracked and overgrown. He walked in its shadow to protect himself from a harsh indifferent sun.

"Oy, if it isn't one kind of radiation it's a god damned 'nother," he whispered, taking refuge. "I wish-" he stopped, standing bolt upright. Had he heard something? Hard to say. It could be movement up top or nearby. It might be the old structure sighing and showing its age, simply losing another piece of itself – suicide by cliff dive into the water.

Drawing a nine millimetre pistol from his hip, he lifted the duffel bag and dropped it to the ground with a thud. Tristram could swear he heard laughter. Kids playing? Possibly. They roamed around the wastes sometimes in packs like wild dogs. As dangerous as any grown man. Bands of tribals used them to lull travellers and merchants into a false security. Then bam! The old fork in the eye. Robbed blind and left for dead. Tribals or raiders, the difference was minimal to a man in the throes of death and forced into a survival situation.

He looked left to right, getting his body low and crouched. Pistol at the ready. Still nothing. For ten minutes the old man stood like that, waiting and watching. A crack rang out and a piece of concrete behind him shattered from the pillar.

"Aww hell naww. Not again. Well fuck it. I'm just the right age for this shit."

Tristram took a knee and readied his pistol, scanning the horizon. He saw movement and took the shot. Distant figures darted behind boulders and rusted road signs. They cried out and Tristram darted to the other side of the pillar for cover, firing blind as he went and dragging his duffel with him.

"Give it up shit bird! I'm gonna find you and strangle you with your own guts. Then I'm gonna use your blood to paint my boat." The attacker's voice was partially muffled by his mask. A heart-shaped thing painted soft purple with over-sized bloodshot eyes. It was a wonder he could see through the tiny holes at all. It was marked with scratches and other symbols, painted on in green and yellow. Shark's teeth protruded from every side, dangling.

"Your boat is an idiot," Shandy said. He dropped his pistol and rummaged through the bag, tearing open the zipper. A short rifle was produced, aged, but sufficient for killing people before they killed you. It hadn't failed him yet, evidenced by his still beating heart and working lungs. Taking the assailants on, even if he somehow had superior numbers, would be no cake walk in the tea park.

To his left he spied a kind of ramp. The beginning of the overpass – a steady climb for any car that decided to take that path. If he could get around it and climb it, he could set a highway ambush. Tristram picked up the pistol and stuck a hand out, firing blind again and turning his face away from the sparks. The bullets ran dry.

_Click, click, click._

The man in the mask's ears perked up. "Dead man's click!"

Tristram grabbed his bag in one hand, rifle in the other and darted for the lip of the road, hurling himself over and running up the overpass until he reached a small concrete barricade at the peak of the rise, where things began to flatten out. He lay prone with his rifle at the ready to lay shots non stop until he saw their asses drop.

He saw the crown of a head. His foe had fanned out across the road, scanning. They would have followed his tracks here. It was only a short way, even an idiot could have managed it. But that was fine. A bead of sweat slid down his tired face. He pulled hard on the trigger and fired in controlled bursts, scanning the gun laterally like it was a machine gun on a tripod.

_Click click click._

"Ahh fuck," Tristram said, placing his palms over his ears. The rifle clattered on the road. His head hurt, ringing with the sound of gunshots. The enemy, at least those he could lay eyes on, were dead or dying, concrete staining deep red with blood. The man with the mask had fallen too, coated in blood, but the mask itself sat clean and serene.

When he recovered, Tristram stood up and brushed away the dirt. The men didn't have much on them. Little food, useless weapons and worn out shoes. What he needed he stuffed into the bag and slung it back over his shoulder. He went back for his nine millimetre.

Encounters such as this were becoming increasingly rare in the wastes compared to when he was younger. Strangers usually greeted each other amicably, or at least with only mild suspicion if you were in the right parts. Tristram had always had rotten luck and here it manifested itself again. But he survived and men who wanted him dead did not, because he imposed his will to live on them and it proved greater than their own. It was a victory.

"Wait until Ted hears about this," he said, carrying on the road towards Junktown, hungry for books and something to eat that was preserved before the war. The road was rough, paved with hard pebbles that dug into his feet through thin, flimsy shoes. He passed parks, swings somehow still in tact, swaying in the wind like they were haunted. Big plastic slides and spaceships to play in. An era and generation fascinated by the concept of space travel – of leaving Earth. A huge fad before the bombs fell. Even comic books were taking a science fiction turn, depicting humans leaving Earth and exploring the far reaches of the galaxy and making colonies on other planets. He smiled at that. If only. Perhaps war could have been averted that way. Perhaps it would have made it worse. Interplanetary war, what a concept.

He came across a statue of a man on a horse. Few people knew what horses were in the wastes. They no longer existed. "What's your story?" he asked the statue. The proud man on horseback brandishing a sword, watching over the entrance to a park that was once, probably, lined with beautiful pine trees and happy people. Maybe squirrels. Everybody loves squirrels. He hoped he would find another one like he did when he was younger, though these ones he would likely not be eating charred on a stick.


	3. Chapter 3

3

Junktown was a small hub by the river in the middle of nowhere. Tristram relaxed at an outdoor bar eating dinner as the sun went down. Cooked iguana on a stick, a Junktown favourite. The light became orange, reflecting off tin roofs and scrap metal sheds. The outdoor bar was covered by a corrugated iron shade. A collector's special Nuka Cola fridge sat behind the bar by the long kitchen bench. Its door was red, painted with a black cola bottle on the front. It emitted a low hum, running on nuclear batteries like the majority of old world technology.

"Ted, I've got a thirst from one of them Nuka Colas." Tristram rubbed his chin. In his middle age he didn't care as much for cola, but he decided to celebrate his victory with something sweet. Besides, untouched bottles would only become more scarce as the winters went on. "May as well enjoy them while I can."

Ted meandered over to the fridge and fetched a cold bottle, sliding it over the bar to rest in front of his customer. Shandy reached into his coat pocket for three bottle caps and slid them over in return. A bottle only really cost two. The buyer got to keep the one that came from the bottle. It was easier that way.

"So where you been at? Got any cuts, bruises? Bullet holes since last time?" Ted asked, leaning over the bar.

Shandy laughed at that. "None. Today, anyway. I got lucky. I think I'll need some more bullets, though. Rifle ammo; she ain't cheap."

Ted lifted himself upright and raised his hands. "Hey, who you tellin'? I'm tryin' to defend my business from... you know, dick heads, and bullets in Junktown are expensive. And low quality, but that's a whole other mess. Don't get me started."

Tristram decided not to get him started. When Ted mooched away he excused himself and headed for the general store. It was owned by a man named Gus. A quiet individual, possibly mute. Perhaps he just wasn't a people person. The door stood hanging open. Tristram let himself in and walked to the back to pick up small metal box of automatic rifle rounds. He slammed them down on the counter.

"I'll take these my good man. No need to gift wrap, I'm sure these will be appreciated anyway."

Gus said nothing. He was an average man in almost every way someone could be considered average. He sat on a stool with his hands on his lap, looking up with indifferent eyes. Tristram exchanged the caps for the bullets, said his thanks, and walked out. Tristram spoke fondly of Gus. "He's my best friend," he'd smile. "We still never talk sometimes."

Up on the hill looking over the vast, dead river, sat a run-down house. Cafe-au-lait in colour and badly weathered. Tristram knocked. A small woman with disproportionately long legs answered the door. "Oh, it's you," she said, gesturing into the house. She led him in.

In the lounge, the sheriff sank deeper in his chair and smoked a cigarette. Sheriff Lobo was a black skinned man, lanky but tough, bred by the harsh wastes and dealing with the slum of Junktown for an age. His computer shined a dim light over him, still chugging on the small battery that had lasted at least two hundred and fifty years. Black screen, green chunky text.

"Hello Shandy," Lobo said. "Good to see you again, you old bastard."

Tristram shrugged, "I ain't so old. I could still run circles around you like you were a child in the school yard."

Lobo didn't question that.

"I'm not going to question that," he said. "So what's new? How are you? Things around here, I tell you, some punk from town, he wants to come up in here and take Sheriff away from me. I'm the sheriff. I'm a decorated hero. I just about built this place with my own two hands. With these," he said, holding them up. "I'm not cooked yet, Tristram. And neither are you by the look of things."

"I need to find more books for my collection."

Lobo puffed away at his cigarette. "Ahh, yes. That old thing. Well sir," he said, puffing again and blowing smoke into the spinning ceiling fan, "I don't know. Uh... you might try Andale."

"Andale? What's an Andale?"

"It's a small town not far away from here. I say town, but really there are only two houses. But I guess that still counts. It's still a place I guess. I didn't know there was anyone there until recently. But I'd be careful. I've heard there's something off about that place."

"Will there be a sign?"

"Yes. Andale is a pre-war name." The fan continued to spin. His fridge rattled and whirred. The radio emitted a low static, turned to some dead channel.

"What does it mean?"

Lobo raised an eyebrow. "What am I a fuckin'... guy who knows... that sort of thing?"

"Is the answer no?" Tristram asked.

"Yes."

"One more thing," Lobo said as Shandy turned to leave. "Have you seen my pipe?"

He didn't turn his body, but only his head and watched from the corner of his eye. "Have you checked your pocket?"

The sheriff patted himself down, eventually producing a small brown pipe from his duster. "It was in my pocket."

Shandy smiled and left. It was dark now and he walked back down the hill along the riverside, returning to Ted's bar. It was lit up by small lights powered by a generator, which in turn was powered by nuclear batteries. A fat ugly thing, but at least it didn't make a lot of noise.

Shandy planted his butt on a stool. The leather had mostly fallen away. Now there were a few others that sat hunched over, gnawing at food or sipping cool drinks. Men and women wandered by behind him. Some kind of social gathering. The men dressed in sweater vests, the women in long skirts, one or two in heels if they were lucky or rich enough to own a pair.

"So what's the good word?"

"No word," Ted said.

"You never have any stories for me Ted. Tell me a story."

Ted's expression was blank. Tristram continued prodding. "Tell meeeeeeeeee."

"I don't remember what happened five minutes ago, let alone any stories of wonder. My life has been here, for the longest time, working hard for my shit. I hardly remember anything before it. It's all a blur. You know this."

Shandy frowned. "That's a shame."

"I suppose it don't matter much. When you think about it, I mean. I should be focusing on here and now. But I just can't, even though I know it's irrational. It keeps me up at night. Why don't you tell me one?"

Tristram wrung his long fingers together. "Well sir, I think I'll go to Andale. Tomorrow. I need a room for the night. Night."


	4. Chapter 4

4

The Black Freighter, despite its name, was an aircraft carrier. It floated in the broadest part of the river of down town Washington D.C. The rust bucket had rested there for decades before anyone came along and set up civilisation there. Tristram had never been, but had spoken to people who had passed through. Whether they kept many books on aircraft carriers, he couldn't say.

He climbed a multi story metal scaffolding up about three stories to run into a man holding a hunting rifle across his body, flat expression on his face. "Hullo."

"Hi. This the freighter? Can I go in?"

The guard shrugged.

"Uh... please?"

"I guess so," he said scratching his chin. "I mean, I don't see why not. What's your business, in The Black Freighter, then?"

"I'm here to buy things and sell things. You know."

"You're not moving in are you?"

"No."

The guard seemed nonplussed. He dusted off his old leather coat and reached for the intercom attached to a pole on his right. He pressed the button and said a nonsense word. A deafening screeching sound cut through the air. The guard, so used to it, didn't block his ears. Tristram's hearing was starting to dissipate with his age, but the sound cut through him regardless. Across the river on the carrier a large crane was turning and lowering a metal bridge between the scaffolding and the side of the ship.

The bridge edged into place and the guard nonchalantly waved him through. Midway across Tristram took the time to turn his head and look out across the vast river. Strangely blue and beautiful. He wasn't sure if the carrier had run into the ground, or whether it was being held in place by anchorage.

At the edge of The Black Freighter a door stood wide open with a painted sign above reading "Depths" accompanied by a white arrow. Beside that a familiar old world sign, clear and sharp: "BUY WAR BONDS."

Tristram cracked his neck and walked into the depths. "Oh indeed."

The open door led to stairs, which in turn led to a railing that overlooked a wide open area of the ship. Part of the hull, Shandy decided, or some kind of storage space for weapons. They would have all been scavenged by now, or at least spread out to other parts of the ship to make room. Loud talking swelled up to reach his ears. The intercom above his head played music – Saturday Night at the Movies by The Drifters. It was a market place, with makeshift stores selling all kinds of whatever.

He followed the stairs down to the ground floor, weaving in between the people. There were so many. Among them he saw something he had only seen a handful of times in his life. A ghoul.

Ghouls were human, burnt by radioactive fire until their skin melted away. What remained was usually sickly green in colour, with blotches of red and pink. The hair was usually thin and had the texture of straw, if it still existed at all. Radiation was no longer harmful to them, making them useful for certain exploration tasks in the wastes when protective suits were unavailable. They lived for, so the people of the wastes supposed, hundreds of years. Even his father had never heard of a ghoul dying of old age.

The man was standing over a bench with a greasy tarpaulin draped over it. A selection of small parts were on display. Tiny screws and gears. The ghoul rubbed his chin with a fat finger. His voice was deep and rough as sandpaper, discussing the merits of tiny screws with the store owners, a pair of old greying men. Much older than Tristram. Life in The Black Freighter must be good.

The owners did not seem perturbed by the ghoul, as many people were. Perhaps they were open minded, or happy to take his bottle caps. Probably a little from column A and a little from column B.

"Excuse me," Tristram said.

The ghoul did not look away from his tiny gears and screws. "Yeah?"

"My name is Tristram Shandy." He extended a hand to show he was not afraid and to give an air of friendliness.

The ghoul did not look at it. "Harold."

Putting his hand away, Shandy continued. "Do you live here? I was wondering, could you show me where the books are? The ones in decent condition. I'm a collector, you see."

Harold finally turned. "Books huh? Shit, might be I could help you with that. If you want to take a walk down town."

"I don't see why not."

Harold gave pause. "Uh... heh, you must be new here, see."

"First time."

"Thought so. See by down town I mean way down town, in the depths."

Tristram's face remained still.

"The depths of the carrier."

Still nothing.

"We call it The Pit."

Tristram widened his eyes, but the lights upstairs remained off.

"It's the ghetto," Harold added.

"Oh! Right of course," Tristram said, tapping his forehead. "All right then. I think I'm up for that."

"Braver than most. Let's go." The shopkeepers shot Shandy a dirty look for taking their customer away, but part of them appeared glad to have the creature gone. Terribly bad for business.

Harold led him through winding hallways too numerous in amount to count. Tristram eventually lost track and resigned himself to the fact that he would be unlikely to make it back on his own. The first thing he noticed was the change of light. The bulbs above him turned from bright white to a dull red. The second thing was the music. It came from somewhere nearby, but not through the speaker system. It was a song featuring a screaming black man.

_I put a spell on you,_ the screaming black man said.

He made a note to ask for the name of the song – he might write a letter to the radio station asking them to play it.

_Because you're mine. Stop the things you do._

They passed by open doors. People sleeping in filth on rotten beds, ghouls and humans alike. Low socio-economic status knew no prejudices in The Black Freighter. A poor man was a poor man. When you were without, you were without, and resigned to The Pit.

_I ain't lyin'. I can't stand no runnin' around._

The halls were lined with loose trash. Eventually the music faded into the background as they went lower, stopping at a random door. "This here is mine," Harold said. Unlike the rest of the residents, Harold seemed to have a room all to himself. When he opened it, Tristram noted the walls. They were lined with maps, scraps of paper featuring diagrams, and a dozen or more clocks. Even more watches were sprawled across the sole desk against the wall. A small stool was pulled up to it.

"This is where I work."

"You make watches?" Shandy asked.

"Try to."

"Why do you get a room all to yourself? Everyone else seems to sleep on top of each other."

"I'm what you might call a veteran, so to speak," Harold said. "I've been here a long time, and around this area in general even longer." He walked over to a box in the corner. "I don't have much. I can give you a book on watch making. I don't need it any more. I've read it through a dozen times already. I could write one myself. Maybe I will."

Tristram took it with a smile on his face. He brought his duffel back around, unzipped it, and dropped the book inside. "This will be a huge help, thank you."

"I can get you more. Follow me."

They turned more corners, up stairs and down them, through common rooms and a kitchen. They arrived at a door that looked like the rest.

"This is the door," Harold said. "I can tell it a mile away."

"It looks identical to the others."

"MORE identical," Harold said. He knocked. The steel rang out and the giant handle turned. A raggedy looking woman opened the door, her hair jet black, her skin pale from lack of sunlight. The edges of her eyes were yellowing like pages in an old book. Behind her, several men and women, mixed with a ghoul or two, sat around a circle reading.

"Books!" Shandy cried out.

"Er... excuse my friend, he's new in town."

The woman at the door moved aside to let them in. A man from the circle stood with glee and shook his hand eagerly, using his free hand to close over Tristram's and secure the grip. "Hello, hello. What can I do you for? Pardon the mess. This is our little club, you see. I'm Ed."

"I'm Tristram. What are you reading?"

Ed snatched a book from the hands of a reader with his legs crossed on the floor and placed it in Tristram's hands. He looked at the hard cover. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. "I should have guessed," Tristram said. "Still, this is amazing! How many of these do you have?"

"A lot."

Harold said, "Good. You can spare one for our friend here. I don't know if he has any particular leanings one way or the other, but I know he'll be happy to add this one to his collection of pre-war literature."

Harold was not wrong. Tristram marvelled. "How much do you want for it? I can give you caps, or some food or water."

"You can have that one on the house. Fitting, really," Ed said.


	5. Chapter 5

5

The following day Tristram Shandy stood where the bridge was supposed to be. It wasn't and he was confused. He had gathered up three other books for his collection, all tucked neatly away in his bag and each only cost him two caps, the owners glad to be rid of them. None knew how to read, but kept the books out of hope they would be worth something to someone, and they were correct. He walked back inside to find a shopkeeper, asking where the man in charge would be. He was directed to the radio tower at the peak of the ship.

"Yes, yes, what can I do you for?" the mayor asked, putting down a radio headset. His name was Dyson. He seemed hurried and irritable, but friendly enough to Shandy on the surface of it all. He kicked his feet up on the desk. Bleak light shone in from the rectangular windows above, shining off Dyson's red hair.

"Why can't I leave the city?" Tristram asked. "I asked the guard why he couldn't just put the bridge in place for me and all he said was special order. I'd like one one-way ticket out of your lovely hell hole please."

"I hear you. And I'd love to let you out, but I can't. It's those immigrants again. Or would-be immigrants anyway. Camped outside the city and want in. Came in the night I suppose. Who knows where they came from. They could have come in one at a time and no one would have caught on. They must have been desperate for food and shelter, kicked out wherever they were before and needing somewhere else. Trouble is, we don't got room for them. We're full in terms of permanent residents. No new friends, as we say."

"I see."

"If we lower the bridge, they might try to pull something. Ambush it from a hidey hole and run across. Blow it up, even, and try to starve us out somehow. Well I'll starve them out, and that will be that. They'll either leave to be chewed up by city raiders or super mutants, or die here. Either way problem solved I supposed."

"And choke the river with their dead."

Dyson leaned forward with a jolt. "Do what?"

"An old war tactic," Tristram said, leaning himself away. He shifted in his chair.

The two discussed the problem and the conversation eventually turned to books somehow. Dyson gave Tristram one to placate him and sent him on his way. He wandered in and out of the city, looking at the sights. He decided to explore The Pit again.

The hallways smelled of shit. He remembered the fact that he could not remember at all where Harold or Ed lived. The Pit operated like any other ghetto, housing a black market and drug trade. People took the first opportunity they could seize to get themselves and their families out, lest they spend their short lives there, dying a short walk away from where they were born. The modern ghetto scene was not unlike its old world counterpart. People stay the same across time and space.

Standing in a doorway he saw a group of dark skinned men leaning over a record player, about to start it up. Come and Get Your Love, that old familiar tune. The men were all roughly his age with bushy brows and grey, curled hair. One of them was chubby. He played drums that were empty white buckets to the beat of the music.

Tristram became aware he was standing awkwardly in the doorway, watching the peep show that is The Pit in action. He couldn't turn away and the song was one of his favourites besides. They didn't seem to notice him, focusing on their used bottles of dark beer, brewed in the belly of the beast. The walls creaked and the song came to an end, making room for the smooth static of the end of a spent record. The chubby individual picked up a harmonica from his side and played with only the sounds of their environment as accompaniment.

Tristram decided to pack it in, asking for directions on how to get to the main floor again. The sight of beer had given him a thirst.

At the bar in the middle of the bustle of city life he met the owners, a young couple who held hands often. He sipped at his cola while the woman next to him ate canned meat served on a broken plate. She used hard biscuits to soak up the rest when the meat was gone. When finished, she ordered hard cheese and munched away, content with life. He decided he would order a Nuka Cola.

When the sun was sinking low in the sky on the following day, an announcement over the speaker system let everyone know that the lock down was over and they were free to come and go. Preferably go, because they were packed to the rafters. Not wishing to overstay his welcome, Tristram slung his bag over the shoulder and again set out across the rubble.


	6. Chapter 6

6

The city had been levelled. Grey concrete spread thin across the road. Few street lights remained that had not been salvaged for metal, or light bulbs, or wiring. Some of the buildings remained in tact, still looming and casting long shadows. Infested with creatures and raiders. Tristram decided it was better not to take the chance. Record books on accounting and marketing projections were not a priority.

He passed a small phone booth, taking a moment to peek inside at a skeleton slumped on the floor. Across the way a Mr. Handy drifted, firing its small jet engines. Mr. Handy was a model of robot used before the war for housework and, sometimes, home defence. They floated on like mechanised zombies, no one to tell them what to do, while others remained in houses still performing menial tasks as though the occupants had never been reduced to radioactive dust.

They were silver, and had a large circle for a head with large lights and cameras pointing in all directions. Roughly five or six arms each, with different implements on the ends of each ranging from buzz saws to hooks for more delicate work. _Best avoid that_, Tristram thought. _Many are still a danger and I have nothing to penetrate that armour besides._

It disappeared behind a squat building on the corner and Tristram continued on his way. He saw a man sitting in the gutter, waved cordially and passed by. He came upon another. This one he recognised. "You. You're that man from the bar. The owner. What are you doing here?"

The man was only out of Rivet City a day but he was dirty as though he had been on the street for a week and smelled as bad. He wiped his face and said hello.

"I was kicked out. Two guards came up to me when I was smoking at the edge of The Black Freighter. They got to either side of me and put a soft hand on my shoulder. Even borrowed a cigarette to smoke before they told me I had to leave to make room for others guests. Can you believe it? Said if I didn't agree to leave they would throw me into the drink. What was I supposed to do? I might have found the opening underneath that people in The Pit use as a swimming pool. Come up that way. But there are Mirelirks in those waters and my choice was made. I'm not a strong swimmer. When does a man in this world have time to learn to swim properly? I tell you."

"What about your wife?"

"She was allowed to stay. Women are more valuable I suppose."

"She didn't want to come with you?"

"I wouldn't let her. Much safer in the city." He made a gesture at his surrounding area. "I mean look how well I'm doing for myself. In a few weeks or months when things die down and the guards have had a lot of changeover I'll make my way back. Pose as a visitor and just live with my wife again. No fuss no muss, my friend."

"All right. Good luck to you. I hope you find your wife again."

The bar owner extended a hand. "Wait. Do you have any water? I'm so thirsty, Shandy."

"A bar owner begging for a drink. I've seen it all now," he said, lowering his grey duffel and rummaging through. He took out a dirty water bottle and handed it over. The seal was broken and it had been refilled. Indeed this bar owner was a near stranger. He had been nice enough to Tristram at the bar, he even remembered his name, but he had only been doing his job. The purified water, the good stuff, would stay with him for now.

At the outskirts of the concrete jungle was a burnt out diner smothered in ash. Most of its neon letters were missing. Against the diner was that old familiar picket sign. "THE END IS NIGH."

Outside the city he passed by an old radio tower. A cliff face stood behind the tower, closed in by wire fencing that had not been torn down or ravaged, a victim only of rust.

Shandy gently placed the bag on the ground and pulled out a small battery-powered radio. He switched it on to static and played with the dials, listening for something familiar. Nothing. He continued until he heard a deep male voice with a strange manner of speaking.

"One. Fifty. Forty two. Nine." The man counted and eventually reset after a minute. Tristram raised his head to look at the peak of the radio tower, threatening to collapse on him and swaying in the wind. He could hear the metal creak and strain under its own weight. The numbers were read out again.

Some kind of war-related broadcast. He couldn't make sense of it. Something to do with the threat of nuclear bombs – a consistent count maintained for one reason or another. Was it dead and on a loop, or was some man really sitting at a monitor somewhere reading numbers in a monotone voice? And for whom? The numbers sounded off again. Tristram couldn't decide, opting instead to switch off the radio and dump it back in the bag. This was all right. He needed to venture into unknown territory to find the good stuff.

The cliff face stared down at him and he shielded his eyes from the sun. The silhouette of a man stood tall on the peak, edging himself across a boulder that threatened to roll down the cliff and crash into the radio tower. He wore a tight blue jumpsuit with clean cut blond hair. The rest Tristram could not make out. He waited for the wave. When it didn't come he approached the cliff. The way around was too wide.

"Who are you?" Tristram shouted. He cupped his ear to listen but the wind and the creaking of the great iron tower was all he heard. A bloatfly the size of a puppy bobbed up and down behind him, buzzing away.

"Who are you?" he repeated at the top of his lungs. He coughed and arched his shoulder to keep the ache at bay. The man slipped away behind the cliff. Tristram was compelled to follow. But he must not appear threatening. It was unusual even in the wastelands of Washington for a stranger to be so cold. Not even a wave, as though he were an outcast leper or a threatening raider. Tristram was neither. He even fancied himself somewhat friendly and approachable.

Shandy secured the strap of his bag tighter and planted a foot between two rocks, shoes falling apart from the travel. He reached up and dug the fingers of his right hand into a stone that jutted out from the cliff. Then the left followed.

His knuckles turned white. Scrambling to get a hold with his legs, he struggled up and away, eventually taking a seat half the distance up when he was sure it was safe to. Taking a drink of water, he looked out at the almost beautiful view. Even the pits of radioactive muck that emitted green steam in the sunlight were not entirely eye-sores.

At the peak he was out of breath, threw his bag down and rolled a distance before stopping to listen. He heard a squeal that sounded like it came from a dying mole rat. He stood and dusted himself off, reaching for the bag and the rifle. Fifty meters in front of him a great yellow beast was swinging at the man in blue with a fire hydrant attached to a long pole.

"Aww shit."

The beast was a super mutant, the retarded cousin of the ghoul. No one knew where they came from – a product of radiation and they were immune to it. Their muscles massive and deformed, capable of great feats of strength, and death-killing.

Tristram bolted forward. The mutant turned and threw the weapon at the mysterious stranger, spinning like a helicopter blade through the air. He ducked and it bounced away harmlessly, but the mutant had followed its path and was on him. His meaty hand engulfed the man's head, crunching it. Tristram heard the scream from twenty meters as though he were there with him, his own bones getting disintegrated. He could almost hear that too.

He fired a burst as a warning shot. The mutant either did not register it or chose to ignore. Tristram ran again to close to the distance, stopping and sliding through the dirt, leaving a great trail of it behind his broken shoes. He could feel each pebble and stick dig in through the weak soles. As he slid he put the stock of the weapon against his shoulder.

The mutant held on tight and lifted the man in the blue jumpsuit clean off the ground, swinging him in an arc above his head. His body slammed into the ground, head still in the iron grip of the freak. He flung him aside like trash. Tristram fired into the mutant's body. Some of the shots dug into the parts of car tyre the mutant had fastened on his shoulder like armour. The rest found their way to his neck and pectoral muscles. Shandy imagined they were tough and would do little.

The mutant let off a guttural cry. "I'll kill you. Eat your bones."

He bit his lip and fired again. The bullets hit the same targets. He needed better. The beast took a run only meters away. No time to reload he fired again at the face. His foe gained momentum even at the final click. Tristram emptied his ammo and pulled the side arm.

The mutant was too close, the weapon's firing speed too slow to empty this one as well but the mutant dropped two meters in front of him and slid across the ground, defeated. Tristram was forced to jump the body as slid by and caught the rocks at the pinnacle of the cliff. He gave the corpse a quick once over in case he had anything valuable, then rolled it off the edge.

The super mutant would have been almost stupid enough to simply plummet if Tristram had moved aside at the final moment, but he couldn't chance it. Because fuck that. It was equally likely he would extend an arm or turn around and grab him, dragging them both to a stony grave.

Picking up his bag, he took out a clean bottle of water. "This calls for something... purified," he said taking a swig and unable to hear his own voice for the ringing in his ears.

The body of the blond man lay nearby, his jumpsuit stained with blood and his face unrecognisable. An ugly sight. Turning his nose up, Tristram went through his belongings. The jumpsuit had large printed yellow numbers on it. This one said 101. Such a rarity, he figured, must be worth something to someone once he cleaned the blood stains.

"Sorry old boy. I'd let you do it to me. I would understand."

He was exhausted and needing rest. The rifle ammo was used up now and it was a rarity. Over the next hill he spied a compound. It would have something he needed one way or the other, he hoped.


	7. Chapter 7

7

The old shopping mall had been repaired, fenced with wood, corrugated iron, and rusted barb wire. Once it would have been a fine piece of architecture with high, broad windows to allow maximum sunlight. A sign above the arched entry read "Paradise Falls". Tristram walked through. There were several makeshift buildings around the mall, each one long and two stories tall. There were several fenced-in yards.

Men and women, burnt from exposure to sunlight and dressed in rags approached their fences as he passed and they watched him with hopeful eyes. Around their necks were thick collars of black steel. He had never even heard of there being a slave trade where he lived, even as far out as Old Town.

"Things must be different out here," he said aloud.

A man in a clean pinstripe exited the main building to meet him. They shook hands.

"My name is Abraham. Here they call me Honest Abe."

"You lot seem well-read. Do you have many books here?"

"Books? No, no books really. Don't care much for books. Most people here, they can't read, see." He cupped his hands together as Tristram explained that he was a book collector. "Book collector eh? Well you know what, I think a slave that can read might be more valuable to a buyer. Do you have any books on how to teach people to read? Children's books, that sort of thing? We can exchange for a slave. He won't be able to read, though."

"Afraid not. I collect the books, I don't dispense them."

"That's a shame," Abe said, unconcerned.

"It is."

Abe and Tristram looked at each other for a while. They were in the remains of a parking lot, but most of the concrete had been unearthed and turned up like soil in a field. Honest Abe tugged a his collar and got to thinking. From the building at his back a woman approached, dressed in a beautiful old world dress, deeply stained, but that would not bother anyone. Pre-war marks on old world fashion was looked past almost instantly. She had a thin crop of blond hair on her head and a long, bony frame.

"But then it isn't," Abe said, ignoring the woman who wrapped her arms around him. "Not everyone is suited for it. Being learned I mean. Don't you think so? The people that built this country? They were elitist. And that's the way it should be. They did build the greatest nation on the planet after all. On the backs of slaves when it was still a festering shit hole like it's been reverted to now. Some people were just made that way, or choose to be that way. Not everyone... what was your name again?"

"Tristram."

"Not everyone can be president, Tristram. They had a whole system set up to keep people unfit for the job way the hell away from that mess. The world needs ditch diggers. And I'm in the digger selling business."

Tristram looked around. The slaves were still leaning against the fences, fingers intertwined with the wires. Rattling them. He was surprised there was no fight in them at all. It must have been forcibly taken away on the end of a stick, or a gun barrel, or a cock. No shouting or unrest, only acceptance. Tristram felt something well up inside him with nothing to do about it unless he wanted a hot lead shower.

He walked over to one of the yards. Honest Abe watched politely, assuming he wanted to inspect, and turned his attention to the woman.

"Who are you?" Tristram asked the first man he saw. He was short and wiry. His teeth stuck out too far.

"Noodles."

"Your mother called a guy Noodles?"

"Yes."

"Oh. I was expecting you to say you didn't have a mother, for a minute there."

"No I got one. She called me Noodles."

"Cool."

"Yeah."

He pushed into the cage and rattled. "Buy me you bastard. I don't want to live here no more. You don't seem so bad."

"I'm not a slave owner."

"Not yet. You can be. Won't cost you much."

"If I bought someone I would set them free. But I don't have that much money on me."

Noodles withdrew. "I see." The men and women around him seemed to withdraw as well. Another blow to their hope of freedom – of getting out of Paradise. He turned to their defeated faces. "You heard him. Abandon all hope." He waved his arms in a shooing motion.

Abe laid a hand on Tristram's shoulder. "Not to be rude, but buy or get out, my friend."

Tristram opened and closed his mouth. He felt pressure behind his head and his stomach ached. "I'm not sure yet. I need time to think and it's getting late. Do you think I could stay a while? Somewhere out of the way? I won't be no trouble."

He was led him to a small second floor room inside the mall. A dank place with no mattress to sleep on. Guards took his bag for collateral in case he tried anything. Without even his bad for a pillow, Tristram decided the floor had to be the way to go.

In the morning they returned his belongings with a piece missing. "This," Abe said, holding out the Communist Manifesto in his hand, "is a rarity."

It wasn't as far as his own experience told him, but Shandy did not make the correction. He continued, "You don't have much money on you unless you were holding it on your person. So uh, I don't think you can really do much here. I'm not mad of course. I would have done the same." He laughed a strangely genuine laugh and pressed the book into Tristram's hands. "But if you did want to buy a slave, we'd take the book for one. The book and the rifle if you wanted a girl."

Out in the yard he had inspected, everyone was packed in tight save for one of the back corners. People avoided it. It reeked of death. "What's up over there?" Tristram asked.

Honest Abe gave a fittingly honest answer. "The guards killed a slave last night."

Tristram jogged over and leaned against the fence. In the corner was the body of Noodles, bloody and beaten. "Why?"

The slaver gave up a small shrug. "Don't ask me. The guards have been disciplined, though."

Shandy turned back to the scene and a man was waiting on the other side of the fence for him, their faces close together but separated by thin wiring. "Oh. You startled me."

"Guard killed Noodles."

"Yeah I can see that. He seemed okay."

"An ass hole," the stranger said, his voice worn and raspy. He was bald with a square face that looked like it had been squished. Sunburned like the rest of the slaves and stinking to high hell. "Men walked into yard in middle of night and talked to him, and Noodles, he talked back. Man said, you better watch your mouth because this is bat country, then killed him with baseball bat. Funny. But an ass hole. Doesn't matter," he said, taking one hand off the wiring and leaning away. "He'll get comeuppance."

Abe was busy talking to two women who had walked in the front entrance. He was a polite individual. If it wasn't for the whole slavery thing, they might have gotten along.

"Comeuppance?" Tristram asked.

"Yes."

"What's your name?"

"Alan."

"Listen Alan. Nothing good lies down that path. I know. I can get you free if you like. I suppose I'd like to do at least one good deed in my life. For now I mostly loot from dead people in their dead houses and dead bedrooms. Your master over there is under a false assumption that I can take advantage of. I can give him something I can get plenty more of. Do you want to be free Alan?"

"Does the Pope shit in the woods?"

Tristram lowered his voice. "But you have to promise," he said extending a finger, "that you will take no revenge. Nothing. Zilch. Leave with me until we get to civilisation, if you can call it that, and we'll go our separate ways."

Alan said nothing.

"You said it yourself. Noodles was an ass hole. A dead one, now. But you can walk out of here a free Noodles. I mean man. A free man. Let go and begin again," he pleaded.

Alan gave him only a stare with narrowed eyes that didn't move.

He waited until they were out of sight of Paradise Falls before he unlocked Alan's collar and buried it. He was afraid that if Abe knew he was only going to set the man free, he would make an attempt to screw him over by taking back the money and the man. Honest Abe did not seem like a man who believed in emancipation.

They made camp down the road. Over a fire they cooked salted meat and thick soup Alan had managed to swipe from Paradise Falls. They saved most of the water. At night Tristram hugged his duffel bag tight to his chest. He made a bed with the few leaves he could gather up. They went to bed without another word. Not so much a thank you.

Hours later Shandy woke up with a start. His eyes darted around. Alan was gone. Stole away in the night. Didn't take a genius to figure out where he went. He tried to go back to sleep to no avail. Clamping his eyes shut, he begged his body to let him sleep. Instead it gave him pictures of Alan's gruesome demise.

"Well fuck you too," he said, and stood up. He left the bag at camp, it would be fine for a few hours and it would only make noise when he was trying to sneak.

Unable to figure out what Alan used to cut the wires on the outskirts, he decided not to puzzle over it and follow him through. The moon shone brightly in the night air with thin strands of clouds partially obscuring. He crawled through the dirt, nine millimetre in his hand. The main entrance was unlocked. A good sign – or bad, depending on how you looked at it.

Inside a shop to the left of the main doors a wooden desk faced the open shutters. Behind that rows of dark green filing cabinets, some of them hanging open and dented, clothing racks dumped across the carpet. He took the stairs at the far end to the next floor, pointing the gun ahead of him all the way.

In the ceiling there was a gaping hole. Tristram could see some of the third floor from where he stood. More importantly, in the room with him, in the corner, was a double bed with a sleeping figure on it. A guard dressed in loose muted browns. Off duty colours. He took another step into the room. A head peeked through the hole above, that familiar round face. Alan took it back up and lowered his legs. No shoes on.

He had been checking the upper floor for dangers. Alan grabbed the edge of the hole with one hand, dangling just above the floor and ready to drop. He raised a finger over his mouth, the universal sign for shut the hell up, Tristram.

Tristram waved his arms wildly at him and mouthed obscenities. Alan dropped and raised his arms like wings when his feet touched floor. Body low to the ground, he turned around and got his creep on. Towards the Noodle killer.

"Alan!" Tristram shouted, raising the pistol. Alan lurched his hands at the guard, digging his fingers into his neck. The guard's eyes were wide, fumbling his hands around trying to shove Alan off the bed and away. He slapped harmlessly. Alan kept his head tilted back, hands fixed.

"I'll fuckin' shoot your dumb ass, dumb ass. I mean it. Let me show you a book I have back home. It's called the Count of Monte Cristo. It's about-"

"You're toast," Alan said. "You killed Noodles and have to pay."

The man choked. "Take as much as you want. I don't know shit. Please, let me go."

Alan tightened the grip. "You killed the slave boy."

"What was I gonna do?" he choked. "I was told to. I swear I never killed a guy before. I haven't. Didn't care for it. Won't do it again." He struggled to breathe under a crushed wind pipe. Even in the dim light Tristram could see his face was as purple a colour as he had ever seen.

Alan pulled a knife from the pocket of his dirty trousers. He held the knife to his victim's eye.

"I didn't want to. I didn't want to. I MADE A MISTAKE!"

Alan moved his hand from the neck and covered the screaming mouth, then drove the knife point into the eye. Warm blood splashed his face.


	8. Chapter 8

8

Walking across a dry lake in the bitter cold, Tristram reflected on Alan. There was no shooting, in the end. He could have chosen someone else. Someone who wasn't insane. Still, he appreciated Alan in a strange way. He would never forget, during their escape, when Alan stepped up and killed those dudes for him. Alan was gone now. They had travelled in separate ways.

A cow, with skin stretched so thin across its body you could see the ribs and veins, plodded along with its head down. It carried on its back a collection of bags and sacks that belonged to a merchant, his family, and the two bodyguards travelling with them.

Tristram waved the merchant over. The man was dressed in soft leathers and a cowboy hat. Tristram spent the last of his caps on dirty water and a meagre amount of bullets for his pistol. It was starting to show wear.

He climbed a dead tree on a small mound to get a better view of his surroundings. An old shack stood by a dock at the edge of the dry lake. It was far out of his way, but he wanted to take the journey, in the event it turned up something of value.

Pointing his gun forward, Tristram opened the door. No resistance and no traps. He searched the shack and turned up nothing. Nothing in the desk, nothing in the safe, nothing interesting on the computer. As he was about to leave he looked at the rug, a disgusting old thing, dirty and rotten. Tristram moved it aside and dumped it against the wall.

A hatch in the floor gazed back at him. He opened it and pulled out a scratched wooden box with a shiny blank plaque fastened to the middle of the lid. He opened it and flipped through, finding it mostly full of old photographs and yellowing paper. He found one book, and a packet of noodles and rice.

Back on the trail he followed signs to Megaton. A town by a river, like Junktown, but enclosed in steel walls that had taken years to build, let alone gather the materials for. A fat securitron robot greeted him at the gate. It didn't detect that Tristram was any kind of threat, so it told him about all Megaton had to offer in an electronic, monotone voice.

"Good day. Be sure to check out the general store for all your needs. Welcome to Megaton."

"Hey robe-it: why do they call it Megaton?"

"Yes. This is Megaton. Here you will find the First New Church of Christ. There is also a Bood-ist temple. Please be peaceful or I will be forced to shoot you."

"Noted," Tristram said. He entered the open gates.

Everyone was in the town centre, gathered around each other and laughing. Each of the townsfolk carried something different in their hands. He caught the attention of a couple walking towards the hubbub, tugging at the woman's sleeve. A small girl clung to her skirt.

"Excuse me. What's going on?"

She gave him a warm smile. "You must be a visitor. Didn't the robot tell you? It's Christmas."

"That rings a bell. I think."

"Christmas is a Christian holiday, silly. Apparently they used to celebrate using trees, but we've decided to make our own tradition since trees almost extinct. We come out here in the late afternoon every year and exchange gifts. Everyone gets a randomly assigned person and gets them a gift. Would you like to come with? I'm sure there might be something nice left over for you that you can take home. A sort of souvenir?"

Tristram waved a dismissive hand. "No, no, that's okay. Sounds nice. Have fun."

The church was indeed a standing, actual, pre-war church. It stood near the centre of the town, Megaton likely being built around its iconic image, close to where the gathering was taking place. Tristram had read somewhere that churches often featured beautiful stained glass windows, but this church had no windows left at all. No one knew how to replace them, let along paint new ones with delicate colours and patterns.

He could hear a guitar being played inside. The sound escaped from the open door and the clear window frames. Such a rare thing to hear. He peeked in the door. A man was singing and a small congregation singing along with him. _Nice slow tune. Real easy_, he thought.

The interior was incongruously gloomy, the aisle lined with candles to put light in the dark corners. A large percentage of the pews were cracked and broken. The carpet was purple, a mere pile of rags sliced into ribbons and strewn across the floor. The old Christian hymn played on. A scruffy looking man and a pretty woman sat on stools at the front and sang together, rehearsing.

"When you close your Earthly story, will you join them in their place? " they sang together.

Tristram took the single step up to the main podium, his duffel bag held in his hand beside him. Two women dressed in flowing purple robes greeted him.

"You're going to hell, Tristram Shandy."

He was taken aback. "Wha... how do you know my name?"

"It's written on your bag."

The singing continued. "There's a better home awaiting. In the sky lord, in the sky." Their voices were captivating and demanded attention.

Tristram shook his head and refocused. "Oh. Anyway, I know I'm going to hell. I already know that. Do you ladies have any books for me? I have a Bible in my collection, haven't read it." He laughed nervously. "But do you have anything else?"

"Afraid not," the first woman said. She was dark skinned with a shaven head. Her nose long and pointed.

"And you think of tearful partings when they left you here below," the song went.

"Not much survived the war I'm afraid," the black woman said, "other than Bibles which we have in short supply."

"Short supply? Really?"

"Yes," she said. Her name was Charlotte the Charlatan. She had a tattoo on her wrist, the symbol of a new brand of Christianity. Her companion was Anna the Unwholesome. Matching tattoos. "Because of the low numbers we can't give them out during our sermons. We just rely on everyone to listen to the word of God as we read from the podium up here."

"I see. So no books, then?"

They shook their heads in unison. "Well, Paul the Inadvertently Offensive might have some in his home. He's not there at the moment though, he's gone on a heathen pilgrimage."

"That's a shame." The singing voices reached the end of the song. Tristram already missed the gentle guitar and the woman's pretty voice.

"Quite shameful, yes," the Anna said, her brown hair waving in the breeze that came in through the open doors. She kept her eyes to the ground as she shook her head again. The other woman nodded consistently and thoroughly.

"You see he follows the Way of Light. A new religion. My ancestors would turn over in their graves they would. Anyway, they believe the way to god is through eternal life, apparently totally unaware of the irony. They wander out into the wastes in large groups trying to find areas of high radioactivity so they can turn themselves into ghouls so that they might live longer."

"I don't think eternal life is for me," Tristram said. "I'd deny myself a death."

"Would you like to attend a service? We're holding one soon, for Christmas. We have performers, too. A lovely young couple."

Tristram politely declined, though agreeing on the point about the loveliness of the couple and their voices, asking instead if there was a spare bed somewhere. He was told to go to the shelter on the hill. He made sure to ask for Paul's address 'in case he comes back soon'.

"Would you like to hear more about how you're going to hell before you go?"

"Umm... raincheck."

"Will I ever see you again?" Charlotte asked as he left the church, adjusting his collar.

"Sure baby. Next apocalypse."

Tristram took the metal steps laid into the hill and climbed. The shed at the peak was an old barn with a dozen bunk beds paired with soiled mattresses lined along the walls. Each had a footlocker at the base. A female ghoul in tattered clothing greeted him and laid a soft hand on his shoulder.

"Hello. My name is Marla the Irritable. Are you looking for a bed? Only one cap per night." Tristram rummaged through his bag and found a sole bent cap under the blue jumpsuit.

The night was full of turning, coughing, and the occasional dull snore from deep in the corner. This was among the few times Tristram was thankful it almost never rained in the wasteland. The roof would leak terribly, and he was on the top bunk. He thanked someone else's deity and turned over.

In the morning he rubbed his eyes until he saw stars. After skipping a shave, he carried his bag to the other side of town in search for books. Door to door, he solicited four old books in decent condition. He took them with a smile and a handshake.

Across town he saw a massive square building with all of the windows boarded. Behind was a faded billboard with peeling paint featuring a fantasy girl advertising a car. The three dimensional block letters on the front of the squat stone feature were all in amazing condition, reading: "SuperMart." He turned out his pockets to nothing but lint and a small butterfly. He would try anyway.

People walked in a steady line in and out of the store. Christmas was over and Megaton was getting back to its dreary life. The one where you had to remember that every day was a new fight for survival, which blocked out everything on the peripherals of things that anyone thought mattered.

A young boy who would not have seen more than ten winters greeted him with a smile. "Where do I find the books?" Shandy asked him.

"Books? I'm sorry we don't have any right now but you can check with the manager."

"I might. Where do I find him?"

The boy directed Tristram to the rear of the store. He also informed him he would have to leave his bag at the front.

The shelves were stacked with a supply of all kinds of pre and post war food. Even things like small used electronics and cook wear. When the shelves ended at the back, he found they even had small clothing racks. Shoppers were holding the clothes against themselves and looking in the smudged oval mirror provided by the management. On the large radio high up on the wall You Never Can Tell by Chuck Berry played, setting the mood for spending.

He approached a small young thing with neat brushed hair tied in a simple ponytail. She was hanging new stock on the racks, probably all bought in from travelling merchants or salvaged from dead ones. He read her name tag.

"Excuse me Dominetta, is that the manager's office, back there?" he pointed.

She turned and smiled. "Friends and well-wishers just call me Domino."

Tristram repeated the phrase, substituting her full name for the shortened version.

"Sure is." She turned herself back to the clothes, but her attention remained on him. "What's your name? You know mine. It's only fair."

"Yeah but you work here. Also you wear a name tag."

"Maybe you should wear one too."

Tristram let a small laugh out. "If only I could bring my bag in. I'm Tristram." A man squeezed in between them to pull a polo shirt from the display, excused himself and moved to the crowded mirror.

"Would you like to buy a suit Tristram? We have some great grey pinstripes and hats. We even have ties. Ties!"

"Not much of a hat person. Or a suit person, really."

"Oh but you could be!" she beamed. Domino snatched up a suit off the rack and pressed it against his chest. He politely pushed it away and she gave him a mock frown. "You don't like suits? They're so formal and nice. The ladies like a man in a nice suit." It's true. They do.

She continued, "Take advantage of it. It's so hard for ladies to find good formal clothes." Her voice expressed playful frustration. "Did you know that we've never stocked a single dress here? Skirts yes, but no dresses. I'd love to wear a dress one day."

"You've never worn a dress?"

"Never ever." Her frown gained authenticity and Tristram's heart sank.

"I travel a lot. If I ever find a dress I'll send it to you."

Domino squealed and almost leapt out of her skin. Nearby patrons were taken aback, slowly moving to different areas of the store. The song switched over to One Fine Day by The Chiffons. A favourite.

In the back of the SuperMart he found the manager typing away at his computer. "Doesn't it amaze you that those things still work?" Tristram asked.

The man was young, jet black hair slicked with gel or who knows what as a substitute. He wore a navy suit and brown wing tips. He could have made a convincing lawyer, if those even existed anywhere. He said, "Who are you? Get out of my house."

"This is a place of business. Not a house of... something."

The man opened his eyes wide for a moment. "Yes. Yes it is. What can I do for you? My name is Steve."

Tristram gave him the spiel about what he did with his life.

"Nothing like that. If I ever get any in, I'll put a call out over the radio. I know a radio man. Do you listen to the radio? Of course you do. All normal people listen to the radio. That song that's on now; One Fine Day? Everyone's favourite. I hear people wandering the streets singing it all the time. Gets stuck in your head like glue, yessiree Bob. If you ever find any old music no one has heard before, send it my way and I'll pass it on to the radio man. Always excited when a new song is released. Anyway I'm rambling. The point is I'm sorry I don't have anything for you. If you'll excuse me I need to draft up a new sexy logo." The men shook hands. Getting a look at his wrist when the sleeve dropped, he saw the brand of the church again.

"What's that over there?" Shandy asked, pointing with his free hand at a pile of old plastic bottles with new labels.

"Those are new marketing. Got the inspiration from Nuka Cola. It's just old water bottles, but re-marketed."

Tristram rubbed his stubble. "Re...marketing?"

"Yeah. We do the same with the clothes. You've got to make people want them. Make them think they do anyway. Har har! Make the brand new and sexy. People don't want the old world. It's a bleak winter of discontent. People want to begin again with the new." He waved a hand through the air like he was painting a gay rainbow. "The new world – now that's desirable. So we market the water and soft drink and clothes as new. We make people feel a certain way about wearing them. They like to give off an image of the kind of person they are. Drinking marked-up water and clothes does that, if you sell it to them the right way."

"Where did you learn all this?" Tristram asked, feeling a cough coming on. He made a mental note not to cough in front of Domino.

"All my idea. An old world one though, I think, appropriated for today's modern spender. That's why I'm here in the SuperMart. It's the perfect mix of old and new. A bastion of consumer society."

Tristram left, looking around swiftly for the smooth body of Domino, but she had gone off elsewhere. He said thank you to the greeter boy who handed him his bag, and stepped into a hot wind.


	9. Chapter 9

9

The owner of the only Buddhist temple Tristram had ever seen called himself Dr. Strangelove. In the post-apocalyptic world, a man often chose his own name. With no paperwork it was easy to call yourself the king of England and strut about, free as you like. It was no different in Megaton.

Ancient prayer flags hung over the archway. The doctor sat cross legged on a cushion devoid of padding. His hands rested on his knees and his back was straight as an arrow. He wore jade beads looped around his neck.

"Are you a real doctor?" Tristram asked midway through their pleasantries.

"I'm not a medical doctor. I'm a scientific doctor... of science."

"From the university of...?"

"Credentials aren't important. I specialise in nuclear physics."

Tristram walked to the side of the makeshift temple, a hollowed out, cookie-cutter, single-story home just like any other. He dumped his bag on the floor. He came back to the centre to face Dr. Strangelove. He was a tall man with no hair and tiny ears. The simple rags were loose on his body for maximum meditative comfort. He exercised at least one hour a day so his body could endure the prolonged sitting, as the monks of old once did. That was the birth of martial arts, now almost gone from the world.

"You wouldn't happen to have any books on nuclear physics?"

"Not any more no, I got them all from Oldtown when I was studying there. No use for material possessions here. That's why I keep the windows open at all times. There's nothing for anyone to take! Although we do get infestations of bloatflies and mole rats from time to time."

"What do you do about that?" Tristram asked, taking a seat opposite and attempting to cross his ageing legs. The prayer flags flapped in the wind. The jade beads swayed slightly.

"Destroy them until they're dead," Dr. Strangelove said.

"How Zen. Do you have any books on Buddhism?"

Unlike most people he encountered, Dr. Strangelove did in fact have books. The were no official texts on Buddhism as with other philosophies and religions. The monk explained this.

Since he no longer saw the value of material things, he had been gradually giving his books away. A gift of them would be perfect. He told Shandy to drop by on his home on the way out of town to collect them. "One more thing," the monk added. "I know where you can get many, many scientific books. They would be of great value to the community I'm sure."

Tristram broke position to lean forward.

Dr. Strangelove said, "I know of a secret about Megaton that few people know. I heard it from a guy who knows a guy who knows a ghoul that's an expert on these things. I must warn you. Finding out this secret may send you mad in the attempt to comprehend it. Would you like to find out the secret?"

"If it'll help me, sure."

"It might send you insane, remember?"

"Oh yeah," Tristram said, putting a finger to his chin and looking to the roof. "Yeah yeah I've been around. You'd better tell me anyway," he decided.

"Do you know how Megaton got its name?" Dr. Strangelove asked.

"No."

"There's a megaton bomb buried under the city. An active one. Not dead. Very much alive. And it's just below the surface like a shark in the water, ready to strike at any time. It was a dud. Didn't go off when the others landed on the surface. Then over time it kinda fell beneath the wastes. Erosion and such. And someone built a city right on top of it."

Tristram showed nothing on his face. "Dr. Strangelove, you're a doctor... of sorts. Can you disable it? If it even works in the first place."

"It can go off, if someone activates it, and yes, I can disable it."

"If it's so dangerous, why don't you?"

The wind died and the flags remained still. A centipede crawled through a crack in the wall. Outside a raving drunk lunatic yelled something incoherent and stumbled by the door. He dropped his bottle and it shattered. A waste of rare glass.

"Why would I?"

"To prevent injury."

"There's no point. If we all die, we all die. So it goes. There is no life, only nothingness, and if Megaton goes kaput, then there's no problem. We go back to nothingness. Sand in the desert wind. Easy come easy go, nothing can be held on to, after all."

Tristram began to cough.

"You're dying," Dr. Strangelove said.

"We're all dying doctor," he said, taking a page from Strangelove's mental book.

Strangelove wagged a finger at him. "Now that I like. You must learn to let go. Nothing can be held on to. When you understand that there is no attachment, to material things, or anything. So you see there is no point in disarming the bomb."

"Even though you can?"

"Even though I can."


	10. Chapter 10

10

He stood solitary at the entrance of a small cave on the outskirts of Megaton, concealed behind a light metal door. Dust blew heavily enough that he needed to pull out his length of fabric to wrap around his head, leaving only his eyes free.

Bloatflies were blown about in the wind like loose trash and his clothing battered violently. He gripped the handle, feeling the hot metal. It had been exposed to the light most of the day. The trail inside, according to the monk, would lead him back around and under Megaton through a network of tunnels.

Tristram pried the door open and stepped inside, allowing it to slam shut behind him with a mighty thud. "It's dark as shit in here," Tristram said.

"Yep."

"WHAT THE FUCK." Tristram's eyes adjusted to see a man sitting on the ground with his arms resting on his knees. A cigarette was in his mouth, his lighter left on, the flame swaying, slow as grave moss. Further down the way a light was embedded into the top of the tunnel, but there was no source of light near the entrance when the door closed. He couldn't make out specific features. "Who are you?" Shandy asked.

"Put the gun away. I've been expecting you, Tristram Shandy."

"How do you know my name?"

"It's on your duffel bag ass hole."

"How can you even read that?"

"I haven't been expecting you. I just smoke here," the man said. When asked why, he explained: "No smoking in the war room. My name is Francis Greyson."

The smoking man walked him down the caverns. Small generators dotted the way, giving power to lights. Some in the ceiling, others standing portable. There were no multiple winding paths, only one, the long and sloped. At the end was a circular cavern with spotlights focused on the main event – a nuclear bomb suspended by a thick tangle of wire and rope from the ceiling, ready to drop at any moment. Metal railings in a hexagonal shape ran the outside of the chamber, guarding the drop which the bomb loomed over, threatening to fall.

In the new light he could see the man clearly. Tall with well defined muscle, surprisingly tanned for a man who lived in a hole. His hair was greying like Tristram's, but only one side; a small patch of it, like a growing weed. One eye was blue, the other a deep hazel. The hazel eye was on the side of the dying hair and Tristram assumed it was related somehow.

He approached the the suspended bomb, the shrine to Bhagavad Gita, and dropped his bag. It hit the floor with a metallic ring. He whistled and put his hands in his pockets, looking up in awe at the fat man that had brought them here. Not just Greyson and Shandy, but everyone. The ambassador of past Americans, for their offspring.

"Can I ask you a question Greyson?"

"Is it about the bomb?"

"Yeah. What's with the bomb?"

Greyson inched forward and leaned on the railing. "You're asking why I suspended it? It was buried in this cave at first and I hoisted it up. I could have disarmed it, maybe, or I might have set it off by accident in the attempt. I suppose I can set it off at any moment. But I choose not to."

"Will you ever change your mind?" Shandy asked.

Greyson looked down into the pit."I am the captain of my soul. If I want my fate changed, I must change it." He spoke with a sad, downward inflection, like every word brought him discomfort or pain.

"I don't follow. What would make you want to do it? Why not disarm it and be done? Wash your hands of this mess."

"I want to prevent nuclear war."

"You're going to have to expand on that." Tristram felt stifled in the underground. He tugged at his collar, wondering how Francis Greyson lived down here. Both of their eyes were continually fixed on the bomb.

"Have you seen the tattoos of the members of the church?"

"Yes."

"And have you also seen the SuperMart?"

"I have."

"What about Paradise Falls? They have a symbol as well. The chains they put on the sign. The ultimate symbol of servitude. Have you been to the casino in Oldtown?"

"A poker chip."

"And the ghouls of The Pit in The Black Freighter."

"A red star?" Tristram guessed.

"The Brotherhood of Steel?"

"The sword and the wings, with the gears which show their love of collecting pre-war technology," Tristram said, well familiar with the Brotherhood and its aims. "What does this have to do with averting nuclear war?"

"The world as humanity had known it was wiped out in a matter of hours. Humans did it once and they'll do it again."

"That's what I want to stop. Surely you understand. I collect books, Greyson. Pre-war books by the hundred. I can educate. We can educate. If we learn from history we do not repeat it. We can look back, reflect, and move forward. No more holocausts. The world has seen its devastating effects and it might never recover and if it does, preserving literature and technology will be key. Even this place can be a museum. A reminder never to repeat the sins of our fathers."

"You can educate as much as you want. People don't change. Our ancestors were the same people we are now. And their ancestors, with rock and bone, were the same as them. The more things change the more they stay the same." Greyson did not look up, his voice still welled with sadness and loss. "I talked to you about symbols because I know their power, and I know no good lies down that path. As long as humans have symbols to follow they will keep on the same rocky path," he gestured around the cavern, "with everything that comes with it."

"Is everyone in this town just okay with this fuckin' thing sitting here? I'm living in a cuckoo clock," Tristram said, placing his elbows on the railing and running hands through his greying hair.

"Part of me wants to push the button and wipe the slate clean here and begin again," Greyson said. "But Megaton is only one town. I'd have to start a movement, a following. Very much aware of the irony thank you. But I won't." Greyson's voice was soft, growing softer.

"What stops you?" Shandy asked.

"Usually women inspire men to take action. But I have one that's stopping me."

"What's her name?"

"Her name was Catherine," he said, taking an old photograph from his pocket. Two people, standing happily and smiling. How someone had taken and developed it Tristram was unsure.

Tristram hesitated. "Has she... passed on?"

"She's passed on from my life. But she's somewhere out there." His eyes did not leave the picture.

"What happened?"

"A little. For a while. But all love is unrequited."

"Yeah no shit. Ain't that the truth. Tell me about her." Tristram leaned a single arm against the railing and faced Greyson, trying not to embrace the maddening thought that this man stood alone between two very different Megatons.

"She was amazing. I don't know why I was so in love with her, but I was. Am, I suppose. I can't explain it. She had a smile that would melt your heart."

"Sounds like a lovely lady."

"Do you have anyone worth not blowing up the world for?"

"I'm like you. I did once – kind of. Then she went away. Never really told me why. Not completely."

Tristram looked up at the bomb again, the round tip was on an angle facing the floor of the cavern. All those wires. All those lights. This was one of the weapons that reduced the world to ash and forced humans to start over again. Was Greyson right? Would the world just flip over to a cycle of never-ending self-destruction?

He tried to imagine the blast. What it was like to be caught in it. Finally mankind had developed the means to smite its enemies and this was the result. The standard of living went back to a neat zero, filled with death, rape, suffering, when before it was at the highest it had ever been in human history. Now it was wasted. Beginning again from the dark ages.

Perhaps Francis and Dr. Strangelove were right. Eventually everything would be reduced to nothingness anyway, so everything was moot. Even unrequited love.

"I'm sorry. I'm tired and need rest. You're welcome to stay here a while if you need to. I'll give you the books tomorrow," Greyson said.

Tristram agreed and was shown to another set of rooms on the opposite site of the entrance. Spacious, with a sink and clean mirror, even makeshift bedding. Surprisingly comfortable. He dropped the bag and washed his face with warm radiated water. His ageing face stared back at him from the mirror. His eyes seemed heavier than usual.

Greyson gave him a steak from a cow that came from some farm on the edge of Megaton. It was almost the best food he had ever eaten since he was a boy. How Greyson acquired it or paid for it he didn't know. He didn't appear to be a wealthy man. Tristram entertained the idea that he held Megaton at ransom for regular payments, but dismissed the idea. Francis Greyson was a lunatic, but not that kind of a lunatic. Although, he admitted to himself, with lunatics it's so hard to tell.

He collected six books from Greyson in the morning and found his own way out, eager to get as far away from the bringer of death as he could before the man had a chance to change his fragile mind.

He wandered through the flat wastes finding skeletons on park benches and the bones of children under swing sets. In the remains of a car parked at the drive-in movie theatre he picked a decaying watch off the driver's wrist. He smiled, thinking of Harold, and pocketed it.

The car itself, a Corvega model, had lost all traces of paint. Long and thin, perfectly aerodynamic for the ride across the lonesome road to the sea. From point A to B on business, point C on weekends. The tyres were flat as a cat on a highway, falling apart. One had been taken off completely by someone, for some reason. The interior was cheap leather. The ball of the gear stick was an eight-ball.

With a length of pipe he pried open the trunk, finding an old golf bag full of clubs. Useful weapons for close combat. He chose a driver and pocketed some balls, leaving the rest. Perhaps a weapon for some other lone wanderer to find and wield to smack bloatflies out of the sky or wrap around the brain of a raider.


	11. Chapter 11

11

Tristram walked to a small mound with almost soft, fine grass. Everything was clear, not a cloud in the sky. The air smelled sweet. In the distance were crisp blue mountains. To his right, the remains of the woods. Birds were singing.

Shandy carried the golf club in one hand, pocket full of balls, and took a place on the mound as near to the centre as he could figure. He had even taken a tee, lightly scratching it over the surface of the dirt, and then he drove the point in and rested the ball on top.

He felt the edges, smooth, but also full of tiny dents but he couldn't figure why. They were all like that so there must be a reason for it. Because he had read about golf in books, he had a picture in his head of how to play, but they never explained the balls. The head of the driver tapped the ground. The sun was above him.

Then there was only silence. The birds stopped. Shandy gripped the padded brown handle of the club as best he knew how. He narrowed his eyes and firmly planted his feet. A tumble weed rolled by and he drew the club back and hit the ball. It putted along the ground a short way and stopped in the barren field.

"Rats."

Picking another ball from his pocket, he dropped it on the ground and rolled it on to the tee with his foot. He needed calm again, taking time to get his head right. He thought of Dr. Strangelove and tried to emulate his ways, since he figured they would probably transfer over to the game of golf.

Swing and a miss. Another attempt brought the club to into the ground, kicking up a cloud of dirt. Deep breaths. He relaxed and tried again. This time the ball got off the ground, but not far. It cut through the air veering off to the left slightly and landing almost twice as far from the mound as the first ball.

Looking down he noticed the broken tee, snapped clean in half. Worth it? He used his hands to create a small clump for elevation and dropped the final ball on it. So many things to keep the mind on at once. But the trick was also not to think too hard about it. Just let go and swing.

The ball sailed smoothly through the sky. Tristram smiled, covering his eyes from the sun and watching it go. It landed and rolled. Perfect. He lowered the club to the ground and watched over everything, saying nothing, doing nothing.

At a train station he found a small handful of bottle caps. No trains. Those were extinct. One day the nation might be connected again by means of a rail network. But not for now. In the main office, on the wall he saw an old painting. One corner was faded and peeled, the colouring light. It was Chinese style, depicting an old man with a flowing white beard casting a fishing rod over a waterfall. He was sitting happily in light blue robes with golden trimming.

"I'd love an outfit like that. So much room to strut about. Good for my circulation, not like these rags and leathers," he told the Chinese man, touching the paint with the tips of his fingers. Near the end of the day Tristram reached a tunnel in a mountainside. A subway.

He approached the darkness. A long silver train looking like a tube from five minutes into the future was overturned on the track. Tristram accessed what he could but there was no loot to be gained. Plus all those skeletons were unnerving and probably wouldn't have appreciated being robbed by the fifth looter to come along in the past two hundred and fifty years. Then he'd be reminded of Gunter and then he would feel bad and have to tell him he stole from his distant cousins and then they would get into a whole thing about it.

"I miss you Gunter," Tristram said to the ceiling of the tunnel, as though Gunter were flying high in the sky in his helicopter, watching the ground and bombing commies with a manic smile. Or whatever Gunter was actually doing on that fateful day when he made the switch from alive to dead.

The subway tunnel had the occasional door on either side. Nine out of ten lead to a collapsed room with no access. The odd one led to a small office with a working computer and a locker or two. Meagre craps in all of them. The tracks themselves were beginning to come apart. The signs were unlit, their lights long dead. The white signs were held in metal tubing with long bulbs from the back, illuminating the directions for tunnel workers and people who just sort of wandered around in places like this. People like Tristram Shandy.

Further in, towards the middle of then night or so he supposed, he reached a strange cavernous room with a high ceiling. On either side of the track were escalators that led down into another station, each path closed in by rubble except for the one that lay ahead.

Somewhere over his shoulder, a low moan escaped parched lips. It sounded dry and primal. No man or animal, only abomination.

He readied the golf club. Slowly he walked beyond the escalator to his left and looked over the railing. A train on the track, crossing horizontal under the path above like a lower case t, stopped by the collapsed tunnel ahead of it.

Another growl, from the tunnel in front this time. A pincer strike from the tunnel he came from, somehow missing his foe, and the tunnel directly in front, where he needed to go to. Tristram couldn't decide if it was coordinated or coincidence.

Deciding not to try his luck down the escalators, he stood by the railing that sat perched above the dead train. He would jump down if need be, to create distance.

A growl again, followed by another, answered by a third from the other side. He spoke knowing he could not be understood. "Come on then. You big ugly freaks. I won't die today. It'll be a cold day in hell before a place like this becomes my grave." He brandished the club, flailing it around calmly and looking to both points of attack.

A light brown creature stepped into the light. Its skin was so tight Tristram could almost see every bone in its once human body. A feral ghoul. A similar process of creation to the standard ghoul, but no longer sound of mind. No one was really sure of the exact difference in process. Perhaps it was time or luck, or perhaps this become Harold's fate.

He pushed the thought to the back of his mind and braced. The feral began to sprint at him. Two more followed a short distance behind.

He dropped his bag and swung the weapon. It connected to the side of the head, caving the skull and sending the beast toppling over the rail. He bounced off the roof of the train below and rolled away in an hilarious rag doll.

Tristram brought the golf club back around, bringing it down in a vertical swing. Another direct hit to the top of a feral ghoul's bald, shiny dome. It dropped to its knees and crumpled on the floor. Tristram pulled his gun like a slinger from the wild west. Two easy shots to the chest put the third feral flat on its back.

Pocketing the weapon again, he turned in time to see a ghoul that had come from the far entryway, where Tristram had entered the giant room. He clubbed it to death, the weapon becoming bent and bloody as he went.

Then they appeared. Feral ghouls. By the thousand. Dozen probably, it was hard to tell. He laid shots non stop until the bullets dried up, forcing a reload. Out of time he threw the bag on to the top of the train. Now stacked with books it landed heavily, producing a noise so loud it would wake the rest of the ghouls if they weren't already invited to the party thrown in his honour.

Tristram threw the remains of the weapon and nailed one in the head. He whipped around and followed his bag, landing on the train and putting a huge dent in the roof. The bag was picked up, constantly hitting his side as he ran and jumped the gap to the front car. Turning, he saw that they followed him down, jumping and falling over the railing.

"All aboard mutha fuckas."

Shandy would have been amused by their stupidity if they weren't as deadly as they were tenacious He reloaded and unloaded into the crowd. A final straggler gripped him by the shoulders, digging its pointed, rotten teeth into the skin. He screamed, smeling the foul, musty scent. With all his strength he kicked it off and shot it until the bullets ran dry. At the sight of his own blood he began to feel the pain, and fell back on the cold metal roof, breathing heavily. His lungs felt like they were about to burst and his old hands shook more than usual.

"Fuck this," he gasped, clutching his shoulder. "Time to go. Swear to god, if I turn the next corner and turn into a zombie..."


	12. Chapter 12

12

The tower stood tall among empty streets and levelled houses, a sole beacon in the harsh wastes. It was surrounded by high concrete walls and a reinforced steel gate. Old, sharp barbed wire ran in circles along the top, somehow free from rust. The tower itself was thin but tall. Brown the colour of dead leaves with empty pot plants on every balcony, all the glass blown out. A lighthouse in the dead sea. Tenpenny Tower.

Tristram stumbled through the desert towards the tower. It grew the closer he got. Often he would lose sight of it behind a hill or pile of rocks and cars, but he would soon find it again and get his bearings. He clutched his shoulder, wincing from the pain.

A rich man had taken up residence there, with a platoon of armed men paid in accommodation, safety, and pretty women. Allistair Tenpenny; a true American entrepreneur. The tower attracted the rich type, from all across the wastes they would come in droves and offer up substantial contributions. The more they gave the higher they could live above the filth, sex, and murder below.

They wore pretty summer dresses and park stroller outfits, smoked pipes and cigars, and kept the riff-raff at bay. Not everyone is built to deal with violence and a daily struggle for survival. Insulation from reality is only a bag of caps away.

"Hello? Can I talk to someone please?" Tristram asked, holding in the intercom button.

"What is the uh, nature of your visit?" a pleasant sounding woman asked from the intercom.

"I'd like to visit Tenpenny Tower."

"Someone will be right with you. One moment please."

A minute passed in the sweltering heat before a man in tough metal armour appeared above the wall, apparently standing on scaffolding, and pointing a long hunting rifle at Tristram's chest. "What do you want?" The guard was bald and black, with the deepest, calmest voice Tristram had ever heard.

Tristram answered, "To visit. I want to buy. Sell. You know. Take a look around. Also I need medical attention." He pointed to his bloody shoulder, covered by the rag he had been using to wrap around his face to keep the dust at bay.

"This is a place of residence not a house of... walking around. You have to live here to be let inside."

"Then I'd like to become a, you know, permanent resident."

"It'll cost you."

"How much?"

"How much you got?"

Mindful of the gun, Tristram lowered the duffel slowly and looked through. He had no caps. Only books and a jumpsuit. The books he needed, but the jumpsuit was a memento. He frowned at the thought. If he knew what 101's dying wish was he might have tried to fulfil it out of some weird sense of obligation to his fustigated friend.

"I have this," he said, holding up the deep blue jumpsuit with the yellow 101 on the back. He turned it around as if modelling the outfit. "The very best in post-war men's wear."

"Now just what the fuck is that?" the black man asked.

A hunch was forming. If Tenpenny was the man he thought he might be, Tristram had a chance. A slim one, but a chance all the same. He took a chance on a rumour.

"Tell Tenpenny."

"Tell him what?"

"What this is."

"What is it?"

"Just describe it to him. It's one of them rare collector's items," Tristram said.

"Tenpenny doesn't have time for this."

"I'm dyin' over here, can't you see? Just do me this one thing."

The guard remained unmoved. Tristram brandished his pistol. "I can give you this if you deliver the message."

"That's a nice pistol."

"It's pretty unique," he lied. "And yours, if you want it."

The man disappeared. Tristram sat. For thirty minutes nothing happened. Tristram lay in the sun slowly seeping blood. With a groan the gate finally opened. The guard did not look up from examining his new toy and told Tristram where to find the big boss.

He followed the instructions, got lost for ten minutes, ended up using the women's rest room by mistake, then eventually figured out that all he had to do was climb the stairs until there were no more stairs. He was told a the top of the massive building by Tenpenny's secretary that the elevators in Tenpenny Tower were in fact operational and that he was an idiot.

In too much pain to care, he went through the double doors. Allistair Tenpenny sat an oak desk in front of a double bed. The room was lavishly decorated. A radio played, turned down low, sitting on a bedside table. A talk radio show, for all the things there were to talk about in the world today.

"Hello there," Tenpenny said with an almost old world southern accent. He smiled and looked up from his computer. "I understand you have something for me." He was wearing a loose fitted robe, but incongruously coupled with business shoes. A set of wing tips so pointed Tristram was sure he could shove them so far up someone's ass it would feel like kissing whoever had been licking his boots lately.

Tristram laid the carefully folded jumpsuit on the dark wood of the desk. Tenpenny touched with one hand. He lifted it slightly and adjusted his glasses. "Yes. Yes. This is it. This is the stuff. Do you know what this is?"

"Dirty?"

"Yes. And?"

"... smelly? Bloody?"

"No," Tenpenny said, getting to his feet. "This is the rarest of the rare. A vault jumpsuit."

"Vaults? Don't start me on that old catcher's myth."

Tenpenny's smile never wavered. "Not a believer in vaults eh?" He held the suit up to the light, stretching the fabric, beaming at it. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say. Explain this however you like. To me, this is a vault jumpsuit. Number 101, no less. Extraordinary."

A bodyguard dusted his suit and got off the wall. "What do we do with him?" he asked.

Tenpenny snapped back to the present. "Eh? Oh, him, yes. Show him to the infirmary, then stick him somewhere out of the way. This is really something. Of course you can stay. Frank here will get you acquainted with the place. If you cause any trouble I'll get Frank to fetch me a switch, you know how it goes."

On their way out of the office, a tall woman with jet black hair tied in a pony tail was speaking with the secretary, about to enter Tenpenny's room. Her replies were short sharp syllables.

They found a large room which was in fact two or three regular rooms with the walls knocked out, turned into a kind of doctor's office. A man in a white coat met Steve at the door. Frank waited outside on a chair, catching a nap.

Tristram shook the doctor's hand, causing him pain in the shoulder. "Hello, my names is Doctor Smith. I'll be your... you know, doctor. What seems to be the trouble old sport?"

He removed his shirt to show the bloodied rags. "Bitten by something from the depths of hell."

Smith frowned. "Oh dear. You'll need some antibiotics and such, right away. Terrible injury, yes. Might get infected. Might have to lose the arm and we don't want that." When Tristram did not reply the doctor became worried. "We don't want that, right?" he said in a hushed tone.

"Right."

Smith clapped. "Right then, lay down over there," he said, gesturing at a thin shower curtain covering a corner of the room. Inside was a hospital gurney from who knows where. Tristram sat up on the bed and slowly lowered himself down on his back, laying still and looking at the cracked ceiling. The doctor closed the shower curtain and fiddled with his supplies on a silver trolley beside the bed.

"Right then. This won't hurt a bit. It'll hurt a lot. Har har! Har... har, errm, yes quite. Here." Smith gripped a small syringe and drove it down into Tristram's shoulder like he was banging his fist on a table during a heated argument. Shandy's eyes exploded out of his head and the doctor pressed down on the plunger.

"JESUS FUCK."

"Yeah, that's the stuff."

When the needle was removed Tristram rolled over and gripped his arm, writhing in pain. "Are you trying to kill me?"

"I'm trying to save you from losing an arm. Then you'd need one of those robotic ones. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, you know. I read that somewhere."

Tristram gasped. "Whoever wrote that failed to emphasise that it almost kills you. Fuck. Maybe you should just off me right now, I can't take this. Too old. Weak as a kitten."

"Nonsense. Now lay there while I bandage you up again. You'll be fine, but try not to do any strenuous exercise and suchlike for a while. Avoid lifting heavy objects, don't get it wet, common sense things really. To someone with a degree in medicine."

"Roger."

"Smith."

"Whatever."

The doctor patched him up and sent him on his way. Tristram kicked Frank in the shins to wake him up.

Frank led Tristram through the halls to a level near the bottom of the tower. He picked up a red courtesy phone attached to the wall and asked for the door to be unlocked. Room 101. Either Tenpenny's idea of a joke or mere coincidence.

Leaving the door hanging open, he walked in and dropped his bag on the desk attached to the wall. An old bulbous TV set sat in the corner. To the right of that was the way to the balcony, the glass door long gone. A nice view, if there was such a thing. At least he had the remnants of curtains. On the wall above the double bed was that old painting of the Chinese man, fishing away.

The bathroom was cramped, but he was thankful for the tub, sink, and flushing toilet. He moved his good arm and placed a hand on his head and gave the room another once-over with his eyes. "So this is my life. At least, for a while."

"Cry havoc said he who fought chaos with chaos, and let slip the dogs of war."

Tristram turned to see a woman at his door dressed in a flowing striped skirt and a simple, clean white shirt, her hands pressed up against the open doorway. Her hair was long and red.

"What's that?"

She frowned. "I heard you were a reader. I thought you might get it."

"Word travels fast up and down Tenpenny tower."

"It does. Must be the elevators," she smirked.

"Is it from a book?"

"From one of history's greatest authors. Bill Shakespeare."

"Never heard of him," Shandy said.

The woman introduced herself as Veronica and stepped into the room, one leg leading and crossing the other. "I'm your neighbour so I just thought I'd pop over to say hey. Sorry I don't have any gelatin based dishes to bring around."

Tristram smiled and said that it was all right. She was fun to be around, he could feel it instantly. She felt like the old world as much as she seemed to be in love with it. A comfortable air with just the right amount of crazy pills sprinkled in.

She continued, "I think you'll like it here in the tower. It's no so bad as out there. Although I can handle myself out there too, don't you worry. Did just that for most of my life. I'm sorta new here just like you. There's a lot do here. You should join our theatre group, we meet in the basement once a week."

"I'm not much into theatre, but I'll come and watch sometime. I've never seen a piece of post-war theatre before."

"It's a sight to see," Veronica assured him.

"I bet."

Tristram showed her the books he had collected lately. She was impressed, flipping through them, smelling the musty pages and sighing. "Ahh. Smells like America. Wasn't the old world so magical? I think I would have fit in there. I bet it was really something. I can almost feel a kind of nostalgia just thinking about it."

He lowered the final book from his bag and rested it on the desk with a frown. "Yeah. I bet it was."

"We could get back there, if you had a time machine. Do you have a time machine?"

"No."

"Damn. Oh well. Tenpenny Tower it is. The modern version." Down the hall a light fixture snapped and dropped with a crash, glass shattering everywhere. Veronica put her hands up together in front of her chest like she was ready to pray. "Oh! You must come to the cocktail party tonight. It's on the roof. It'll be ever so much fun."

"I don't know, I think I'll rest for tonight. I'm getting too old for that sort of nonsense."

"To now be a sensible man, by and by a fool, presently a beast."

He assumed it was more from her friend Bill. "Yeah something like th- OW." She had him by the soft fleshy part of his ear, which was most of it. His head was being pulled down towards her.

"You're like, forty five at most. I know new world life is tiring but you can manage it. We're going! I'm going to change into a dress."


	13. Chapter 13

13

The night was dark and full of alcohol. The moon shone full, gleaming down on the roof of Tenpenny Tower. There had been a light cloak in the closet of Tristram's room. He wore it, pulling it tighter and making his way to the table that some poor bastard must have had to drag up the stairs. The beer was good and not very poisonous. My Girl by The Temptations played on the radio.

The girl who was entering Tenpenny's office rolled up at his side, drink in hand. "Nice, isn't it?" she smiled at him. They were facing out to the wastes, looking up at the stars.

"It is. I've never been so high up before."

"Are you okay with heights?" she asked.

Tristram held up a finger with his free hand and walked to the edge of the building. He imagined the drop. "Yep." She smiled wide and edged closer. He liked her smile.

They hit it off, despite the generational gap. After his beer he walked over to the table and took a water. She took one as well. "The water is good Catherine," Veronica told her. "Did you know Tenpenny purifies it somewhere here in the tower? With some system, I don't know how it works. Only small scale. A bottle at a time. Filters it I think."

At the edge of the dusty roof, in a pocket of shadow, Catherine placed his hand on her boob, sneakily.

He clutched the boob. "Oh ye God."

One morning he decided to tap Catherine on the butt as she left. Classic. He wandered the halls wiping the sleep from his eyes. His closet had also contained a rather comfy pair of pyjama trousers. Nice and loose and deep purple.

Two men in suits came around the corner of a hallway, intercepting him, each grabbing an arm and dragging him back into his open door. They threw him towards the bed. Tristram fell down and sat at the edge. "Is there a problem?"

One of the men walked back to shut the door. The other said, "No problem. We just need you to help us."

"Help how?" Tristram asked, looking up. He straightened his back and flexed his fingers.

"The roof top the other night."

"What's a rooftop?"

"Don't," the man at the door interrupted.

The other spoke up. "The party the other night."

"I don't know nothing about no party. I just moved in."

"I saw you there. I swear on your mother-"

"Woah woah," Tristram said. "Who says I have a mother?"

The men looked at each other and sat down on the bed at either side of him. They were clean cut, short black hair. They might have been twins. One wore a red tie, the other a black one. They smelled faintly of chalk. They sat there for a time with their hands on their knees.

One of them leaned in. "Listen. Tell the girl you can't see her any more."

"What? Why?"

"Because we said so ass butt. Dump the girl. She'll leave. Tenpenny will be happy. The tower can go on running smoothly."

"First of all, what makes you think she'll leave?"

"He's not sure. Just a hunch. Otherwise it's plan B. Just do it well. Tell her whatever. Tell her it didn't mean anything. That you made up any feelings you said you had, if you talked about that. I don't know what you two have – or had, and I don't really care. Just make sure she has no reason to come back. Not that it matters. If she tries we might shoot her. I hear the guard at the post has a nice new pistol so accurate it could probably kill a beastly one like her." The two laughed short and sharp.

Tristram looked to either side. He could smell their foul breath. "And if I say fuck you?" The only response was a finger dragged across a throat. He got the message. Him or her. Both could not stay, though he wasn't sure what Catherine had done to arouse Tenpenny's anger.

"Can I get back to you?"

"You have two days."

They left him on his bed. His familiar grey duffel was sitting against a wall and the painting of the old fisherman loomed above his head. He had only just woken, but now lacked the energy to even sigh. That night he eventually got out of bed and wandered to the basement. It was theatre night. He had decided to finally go.

The basement was cold stone. A lone bulb swung from the roof. It felt cramped. Metal chairs had been arranged into short rows against the wall. Veronica was performing in a play, dressed all in black. Tristram snuck by and took a seat near the back.

He noticed a man sitting on a wooden box at the end of the stage. He started to play an electric guitar, hooked up to an amp. Tristram's eyes widened to the size of a super mutant's balls. "Holy shit," he whispered to himself. The man next to him leaned over. He wore a faded leather jacket and light blue jeans. He was wearing a new looking pair of white socks.

"Amazing isn't it?"

In a trance we watch the man play the instrument. The sound was deep and melodic, but not a traditional song. It sounded like pure jamming. Veronica and the rest of the actors began to wave around and dance. Slow, to the beat of the whining electric feel so mellow and captivating. He glanced around to see that most of the audience was young – barely older than in their teenage years. He didn't know much about theatre, but he did know that it used to be an old man's game.

The man in the faded leather jacket leaned in again. He smelled of mint. "I hear you're the guy who collects books. I know a few people here have given you some. Like me, they know you won't be here forever. People call me Boggle. Come with me after this. I have a few things for you."

The guitar man played on. A woman a row in front lit a cigarette. The smoke rose to the ceiling and dissipated. Boggle fidgeted. More guitar. It began to speed up. The dancers followed suit.

He turned his eyes to Veronica's fiery hair. It was now Tristram's turn to lean into Boggle. "I don't know much about Shakespeare, but I read a little recently. I don't think he was big into electric guitar."

Boggle smiled. "This is new theatre. You won't see this anywhere else."

Watching the man strum at his guitar, and the dancers move in rhythm, Tristram felt almost lost in time. Such escapism. Snapping back to reality after two minutes, he realised Boggle was definitely correct.

Posters of a man named Blind Willie Johnson were hung up on the wall of Boggle's room. As well as a select few girls in nice dresses and heels.

"I'm a fan of these ladies," he said. "From an era where shaved legs were a daily occurrence." Boggle let out a laugh. "None of those girls look like my wife, I tell you. Anyway, here." He looked in his closet. His room was the same basic one as the rest and Shandy had got the same. He pulled out a small stack of thin books and handed them over. "There you go. Now no one can say I didn't aid the future of the United States. Those are quite rare," he scratched his head, "I think."

"Thank you. This is amazing," Tristram said looking over the covers. All very valuable, and indeed, rare. Just as Boggle had said.

"Can I give you one I wrote?" he asked.

Tristram blinked hard. "You wrote a book?"

"Well, no. It's a small collection of sheets, really. It's just my... what would you call it? Ideas and philosophies."

"Philosophies eh? Like what?"

"The nature of life, the universe, and everything. Standard stuff really."

"Sounds pretty heavy."

"Free time will do wonders for the mind. When you're not on a daily struggle for survival, the mind can wander to all kinds of interesting places. I imagine this was what it was like when the first dude invented agriculture and realised he could finally sit around in one place for more than a week. Magical."

"What kind of philosophies are they?" Tristram asked. He took the sheets from Boggle. They were written in dark black ink on yellowing pages with slightly ruffled edges.

"Well," he said, "do we even exist, how can we be sure? That kind of thing. And how can we? Is this all a dull dream about nothing that never ends?"

Tristram said nothing, letting him continue.

"Yes and no. Mostly yes. But that's the thing. I wrote down, as you might read, that we exist at least in some capacity. At least I do anyway. I can't be sure that you exist. You might be a figment of my imagination. Everything might be. What a concept."

"You're wrinkling my brain, dude." Tristram made a shooting motion at his own head and widened his eyes.

"But!" Boggle continued, holding a finger up, "If I'm even thinking about that, then I must at least in some form exist. Somehow."

"Wow. That's kind of revolutionary thinking, old bean."

"I thought so. So you think, therefore you... am. I mean are."


	14. Chapter 14

14

Out in the desert, a small scorpion was rising. He stepped out of his hidey hole and slowly tested the morning air. A bigger, fatter, more radioactive scorpion as blue as the deep sea squished it under a single leg and flitted across the ashes of the wasteland.

Inside Tenpenny Tower, Tristram was entering her room. They sat on the bed. "Catherine. I have to go. I'm sorry."

"Go? Why?"

"Circumstances beyond our control. I know, I know. But we knew from day one this mumbo jumbo wouldn't fly." He lowered his voice. "Tenpenny wants us out. One or both of us. And I can't stay anyway. Man about the wastes. Places to go, things to do, you know it and I know it. So we both know it and it's time for me to go, but it seems you've done something to him. He wants you gone too."

She lowered her eyes, hands in her lap. "I see."

"I can take you back to Megaton?"

"No. Not there."

"Oldtown then. It's not so far. I'll take you there."

"Yeah," she said.

In his own room Tristram packed his things. A knock on the door came. He found Veronica standing there. He went out into the hall with her.

"I hear you're on a jail break."

"What? How did you know that?"

"She told me."

"Oh," Shandy said. A door opened and a man walked down the hall. The two hushed until he was safely around the corner. Veronica continued.

"I don't have any great love for Allistair Tenpenny either. I'll miss my theatre group, but I want to go. I'll take her. You go off to where you need to be next."

"Should we be discussing this in the hall?" Tristram asked. Veronica raised a hand for silence.

"Better if we split up. Harder to find that way."

"What? Nah, nah, he just wants us gone, not dead," Tristram corrected. She looked at him cock eyed, thin eyebrows looking pretty in the dim light. Her hair was messy, probably from having just woken to news of excitement and escape. Not that there would be one. Tristram was sure they would be allowed to walk out the front door. Like any hotel, he would make sure to swipe everything he could before checking out.

Veronica said, "You're going to want to travel a lot, but her and I... we'll find some place safe to settle down. Then you can come visit on the regular."

They made their plans. She turned to leave and he placed a hand on her shoulder. "Veronica. I need you to do me one more favour. Even though I know she doesn't want to, can you make a quick layover at Megaton for me? Bring a spare dress."

* * *

><p>It had been easy, just like Tristram thought. They walked out the front gate, carefree as you like. The guard waved them through, wielding that old familiar gun. Shandy wasn't concerned. He had found another, less flashy weapon in the bathroom of the Tower, of all places. An unused floor, found when he went wandering late at night for want of sleep.<p>

His bag was weighed down with books. Fat ones, skinny ones, pristine ones and ones that were falling apart. Some had been useless burnt out flimsy things not fit to wipe yourself with. Who knows why they were even there. Probably for that exact purpose. He supposed they served the same function as most books on people's shelves – to sit there and not be read.

Beyond the reach of a sniper in the Tenpenny's domain they stood in a circle and parted ways. Veronica pointed him to where she thought there might be books – an old shack not far along the road off the highway.

"Are you sure you two will be all right?" he asked.

"Shandy please," Veronica said. "I'm good at this. I told you. We can manage." He looked at Catherine. She nodded confidently.

"All right. It's been real, ladies." He kissed both of them on the cheek and gave them a hug, never looking back as they went their separate ways.


	15. Chapter 15

Part Two

* * *

><p>15<p>

Agatha's house was sitting in a spoon in the road over a small wooden bridge. Surrounding the house were piles of rocks upon rocks. It had a thatch roof and open windows and the step had a rug on it to wipe your feet. Tristram almost felt the rough surface through his shoes. From the roof protruded a pyramid of winding steel with a grey dust-coated satellite pointing aimlessly out to the wasteland.

He knocked. A man of about Tristram's age answered. "You selling something?"

"No."

"What's in the bag? Something to stick me with?"

"No. It has books. Lots of books. I collect them. Do you have any?"

The man begrudgingly let him inside at the behest of his wife, who was sitting on a red sofa, knitting. Agatha was about his age too, with a kindly smile and short bobbed hair. "Hello. So rare to meet people of our age in the wastes, isn't it?"

Tristram took his shoes off at the entrance and left his bag. "It is," he admitted. "Many people don't last as long as us."

"Yes, friends that I've made over the course of my life have all died in various interesting ways. Two different styles though," she said going back to her work. "You seem to wander around, by the looks of you. My husband Phil and I, we just stay here. It's out of the way."

"It certainly is."

Phil walked through to the kitchen past a tiny wooden sign on the wall reading 'Bless This Mess' and picked up a tray, filling three clear glasses with radiated tap water. The interior, despite appearances to the contrary from the outside, was in remarkable condition. Agatha and Phil took great care of their home. Tristram felt guilty for not fixing up the helicopter. At least for Gunter's sake. Like Agatha, he didn't often have visitors either.

Phil placed the tray carefully on a pine coffee table and took another seat. He gestured at the tray and Tristram happily took a glass and consumed. Agatha smiled. Phil remained flat, gingerly sipping at his own water and keeping his focus on the mysterious stranger.

Another small sign sat above Agatha's chair. This one said 'To improve is to change. To perfect is to change often.' The house somehow smelled of cleaning product.

"I know you said you collect books, and you have your adventures to go on, but I have a favour to ask of you. It's something a little bit different," she said, putting the knitting down.

He looked over at Phil, his expression unchanged. "What did you have in mind? My name is Tristram by the way."

"Tristram, you may have noticed the radio tower coming out of the roof."

"Hard to miss. Yes, I saw it."

Agatha reached under the seat and pulled out a slim black case. She opened it to reveal soft purple velvet and a strange silver instrument that looked like a long, curved pipe. "Conveniently, I just happen to keep this here under my chair. This is a saxophone," she said explaining.

"Saxomaphone?"

"Saxophone. I play it, or I used to. I've had it since I wore a younger woman's clothes. Actually, they're the same clothes because clothes are hard to come by. Anyway. It's gone now. The reed, the pipes, everything. I can't play it over the radio any more. Sounds like two robots screwing."

"That's a shame. I love music."

"As do I. I still have all the sheet music, in fact."

Tristram nodded, his mind taking this conversation to its logical conclusion. "You want me to find you a new saxophone in exchange for books?"

She smiled, looking over at her husband. His eyes still fixed on Tristram, he took out a corn cob pipe from a nifty box beside his seat, packed it with tobacco from an old tin and stuck the end in his mouth. Agatha said, "You're a sharp one. I've memorised all the music, I've played it so many times. And there's a lot of it. I don't have any books but I can give you the music if you're interested."

"I would be very interested," Shandy confirmed. "But where would I find an instrument like that, let alone such a rare one as brass. And in good condition? It seems unlikely."

"Unless you already know where to find one. Vaults, my boy. Vaults. The look on your face says you don't believe in them. Well, they're real. As real as you or I, or Phil over there. Where do you think I got this saxophone in the first place? It didn't fall from the sky, I tell you. There are still vaults largely untouched by the outside world. This one has a big cultural population, you see. Big on instruments. I'm not sure if they make them, but they have a lot of them from before the war. A vault has ideal conditions for storage, and I believe they keep some of them in air tight containers and suchlike. Lots of them. The world of the future needs music, you and I know that but it was years ago, though, so here is the catch: I don't remember where this vault is. I don't think they would remember me anyway. My husband I exchanged outside goods and information for the saxophone all those years ago. We got rid of our maps so no one else could find it. Indeed, we only found it by mistake, didn't we Phil? Such a lucky coincidence. Since then, like I said, we don't travel much."

Phil said nothing, his smoke rising into the air. Tristram could smell it. Phil tamped the pipe tobacco and finished his water.

"Phil agrees," Agatha said smiling. "The only way to find the vault is to look through the records of the company that was commissioned to make them. A subsidiary of some kind. I believe it's called Vault Tec. Very straight forward. I don't know why more people don't take its existence to be proof of the Vaults. I suppose not many people have gone to this building, or else they would have found all them. Most are empty nowadays anyway. It's been two hundred and fifty years. Ninety nine out of a hundred have had to be vacated for one reason or another. That's where most post apocalyptic civilisation started. Anyway look at me rambling again! Vault-Tec headquarters are in the central business district of the city. If you find your way in, you'll find the locations. The number you're looking for is Vault 87."

Tristram found it all so hard to swallow. Was she leading him into a trap? But the preservation of music, like literature, was of high importance. He had to take the risk. It made more sense than simply robbing her. He wanted to switch on his radio and hear her saxophone play. He had never heard a brass instrument before. The closest thing he had gotten was a harmonica.

Shandy stood. "I'll do it. For the love of music," he grinned.

Agatha clapped with delight. "Good. But don't think you'll be standing up just yet. Stay here a night. We can't ask you to leave after just getting here. You must have had a long day."

* * *

><p>Out on her step, he looked up at the stars, longing to hear the music. Just imagine! A forgotten age and forgotten songs. Where had this radio station been all his life? Here in the middle of nowhere. He had never been out this way and he now regretted it.<p>

Both sides of the deal were beneficial. A mind must keep active to keep an edge and stop from dithering away. The wasteland is prone to giving bouts of boredom, which made moonshine so popular. A mind can easily fall away like pieces of a wet cake. Music was good for that – and for the minds of those that had the privilege to hear it.

Vault Tec would surely house all kinds of interesting and unread books besides. Engineering and all other kinds of science, possibly some fiction as well. Just one would be worth the journey. Excitement welled up inside him, interrupted by the opening of the front door. Phil stepped through holding his pipe in one hand.

"Admiring the stars?" he asked.

"Yes. And the radio tower. Did you build it?"

Smoke drifted past his face. This time it smelled almost sweet in the night wind. "No. I don't know why it's sitting on this house. It was here when we moved in."

"Bet it was a real selling point for the realtor," Tristram said.

Phil smiled a rare smile, gone almost as fast as it appeared. He turned solemn, leaned in and whispered, "This vault thing. It stays between us. Don't tell anyone, for any reason. They must remain a secret."

"People know. I haven't stopped hearing about the damn things my whole life."

"A myth is different. The myth of the vaults is fine. Just don't let people find the real deal, or even think there might be one. That's trouble. I can see that coming a mile away."

"Your wife said most are empty," Tristram said. The wind picked up forcing Phil to shield his pipe for a moment. Shandy pulled his coat tighter to ward off the chill. The weather couldn't decide if it was burning or freezing them to death first. Both, really – a two pronged assault to add to the rest of the death-trap that was the capital wasteland.

"They are. The people that came out of them are long gone too. Let them rest in peace. We are their progeny."

"They might have useful technology or weapons. Things like that. I'm sure the Brotherhood would find them to be goldmines."

Phil pointing his pipe like a weapon. "I'm warning you. Tell no one. Not your girlfriend, not your best friend, not the king of England, and especially not the fucking Brotherhood of Steel. I mean it. The vaults stay buried. Yes? Are you picking up what I'm putting down here? Are you smelling what I'm cooking? Buying what I'm selling?"

Tristram nodded slowly, keeping his head high and his back straight. He was not intimidated, but understood the importance of the message all the same. That was the take away. "Yes."

From his own pocket he retrieved a pipe he had found in Tenpenny Tower, stuffed away in his swiped coat pocket. Twice the size of a normal pipe, it dwarfed Phil's corncob. He stuck the end of the pipe in his mouth.


	16. Chapter 16

16

Tristram Shandy narrowed his eyes at the map, hastily drawn on a scrap of thin paper. He looked at the sketch drawn on the other side of the street map. It matched the entrance. Nothing assuming. A monstrous building, multiple stories, with a long awning over the entrance. The entrance comprised of half a double wooden doors. If there was a sign it was long gone and left no trace.

Ripping a door off its hinges as he tried to open it, he threw it aside like flimsy cardboard and let himself in. "Hello? Anybody home? Friendly neighbourhood book collector here."

The halls were filled with scraps of paper and parts of electronics. The filing cabinets were all open and devoid of anything useful. The lights were off, forcing him to rely on the dull light emitted by computer screens, but must had holes and didn't work and those that did were turned on and in a permanent state of error. Thankfully they were plentiful.

He heard a noise from down the hall and the sound of coffee cups rattling together. If there were a glass of water it would be rippling. Tristram fought the urge to cough, taking cover underneath a desk, dropping his bag in the small space beside him, tucked away in the eerie glow.

They were footsteps, and they were subsiding. Either a fat man, or something much deadlier than your average fat man. Tristram crawled out. In the hall he leapt a hole in the floor and found a room with rows of bookshelves. Most were burned, but he found a few in tact. Just what he had wanted, non-fiction, educational. Books on engineering and aerodynamics, mainly. He placed them carefully in his grey duffel and slung it back across his body, continuing on.

At the next door he was blind-sided. A meaty, hulking yellow mass batted him the face, knocking him to the ground. Tristram screamed. His old voice cracked under the pressure. The super mutant placed a chubby hand across his ankles, dragging him along the floor like a squealing pig.

The blow had made him dizzy and the movement made it worse. He lacked the strength to reach for his pistol. It was almost empty anyway. Every step leading up was like a punch to the head. He used his hands to hold on tight, as if fearing his head would split open if he let go. He drew a hand down and saw a thin trickle of blood.

At the top floor beyond two great steel doors, the mutant dropped him, grunted something, and wandered off. Regaining his senses, Tristram said, "Why didn't you just kill me? You big ugly freak."

"They are, aren't they?" a voice said. "Monstrously, monstrously ugly." It was a female voice, with familiar rough edges to the tone. Sure enough a female ghoul stood above him, pointing a pump action shotgun at Tristram's mug.

"Oh," Tristram said, trying to keep his head on.

"He didn't kill you because I told him not to," the woman said. It was difficult to make out her face. There was a strange white and blue glow around her body from a light source behind her. It was all blurred to Tristram, anyway.

"Why doesn't he kill you?"

"Super mutants aren't as mindless as people would have you believe. They don't attack me on sight because I'm a ghoul. I think they see us as some sort of strange kin to them."

"So why don't you want me dead?"

"Despite appearances I'm not a monster, and you're no raider or other lowlife."

"What makes you think that"? Shandy asked.

"I saw you on the monitors. Cameras. You walked past most other things and went straight for those books." The woman lowered her shotgun, replacing it with an extended rotting hand to help Tristram up.

"Was the beating necessary?"

"Don't mind him, that's just his way. Sorry. Anyway the book thing intrigued me. What do you want them for? Something to sell?"

"To preserve knowledge," he answered.

The ghoul woman was delighted at this, smiling and clapping her hands together. "Excellent. Excellent. Then you can live."

"Thank you."

"My name is Shakima, and I wouldn't allow just anybody to leave in one piece. This place is far too important. Far too top secret. Like you I enjoy the simple things in life, like the preservation of knowledge." She moved aside and Tristram could see the entirety of a massive wall of monitors, slightly curved inward at the edges to face a small office chair that looked like it had been sat in for a hundred years. With what Tristram knew about ghouls, it was likely that it had.

On each monitor was something different. The bottom right corner showed the building through various cameras Tristram failed to notice. Working security cameras in this age was not something he had ever encountered in his old age – or ever before.

The rest of the monitors showed something else. Something different. Gunmetal grey walls and long, winding pipes. Bright white lights that someone might see in a hospital. Everything with an almost sterile quality to it. Some of the monitors showed dining halls and workshops in greater disrepair, walls browning and rusting with age, tables and chairs knocked over. A few of them depicted skeletons strewn everywhere. Others were left in pristine condition, as though everyone had got up and walked out in them middle of dinner. Tiny complex hallways, like a small maze in a box.

Tristram pointed in awe. "Are those..."

"Finish your thought."

"Vaults?"

"Yes. This is the Vault Tec building."

"You mean was."

"I mean is. The sign is gone because I took it, so no one would know what was inside. Plus the super mutant guards deter most visitors. This building still serves Vault Tec."

Tristram clamped one eye shut to keep his vision straight. "Vault Tec's dead, baby. Vault Tec's dead."

"Not quite. This place monitors the vaults."

Tristram moved to look around her and closely watched. Nothing happened. He pointed out that everybody was good and dead and probably had been for an exceedingly long time.

"This is why I'm here and have been since soon after the birth of the project."

"Project?" Tristram felt overwhelmed, which was in addition to his hurting head wound. The room was cool. The sides had multiple fridges and storage cupboards for food. In another corner was a clean mattress complete with bedding, even a pillow case. It was a place someone could live comfortably. "You've been here for two hundred and fifty years?" Shandy asked.

"There abouts, or near enough as makes no matter," she said in her raspy voice. The glow from so many TVs illuminated the room. The occasional static flickered across a screen, destabilising the image until it fixed itself.

"And you've been just... watching? In case something happens?"

"As I said, like you I preserve knowledge. Take notes. Write studies. Keep those studies and send them on."

Tristram's mouth hung open. He stood. "Send them to who?"

Shakima moved her head left to right. "You seem like a trustworthy guy, and you're the only person who I've spoken to in a hundred years so I'm desperate for stimulating conversation, or conversation of any kind, really. So I'll you: I send the results to the government."

Tristram was levelled. The combination of this and his injury forced him to take a seat again in the middle of the floor.

"I should clarify," Shakima continued, "That it doesn't exist in the form you might think. Under the White House and other important buildings, they had bomb shelters, similar to vaults, of course."

"Of course," Tristram echoed, his voice cracking slightly.

Shakima raised a finger and began pacing, becoming excited, igniting her passion for the project she had worked at for so long, in conjunction with the fact that she was finally speaking to someone capable of intelligent conversation. The light from the screen began to hurt Tristram's eyes. "So," she said, "When it was moderately safe, those important, rich, and influential people all up and left. They had to at some point. And they made their way offshore."

"Is it safe in other countries?"

"Oh my no. Dead as a doornail, just like here. The whole world was destroyed. Devastating. That's the power of the atom for you though."

"So where did they go?"

"Not far offshore, to a massive oil rig that used to be run by a company called Poseidon Energy. On, and under that, is basically another vault. Designed for them. There's even an elected president."

"Well. I like the inclusion of the word 'elect' in there. Even if it's not by the people. That would make too much sense."

"Oh yes," Shakima said, still pacing the room. "Rest assured, they believe in everything the old America stood for. Democracy is at the forefront of that."

"Ahh. Good," Tristram said.

"Quite good."

"Quite, yes. But that doesn't explain why you need to take notes on the vaults. Especially since most of them are gone. How does that help anyone?"

"They're not gone," Shakima corrected. "Valuable data can still be salvaged. Useful data."

"Useful for what?" Shandy asked.

"Now that I can't tell you. That's top, top level stuff. Only the top Enclave members, and myself for some reason, know that."

Tristram gradually regained his feet, eyes up at the monitors. Those ancient vaults, made so long ago, housing all those people for so long to protect them and their progeny for the future, so that they might rebuild the greatest country in the world. Even possibly during his own lifetime, below his own feet, people were living, laughing, loving. Dealing with everything people deal with. Young and old, the smart and stupid, the just and unjust alike. All that sex and murder and unrequited love and everything else. All down there. He wondered if there was a vault beneath his own helicopter.

He turned to take in his surroundings again. "Hey, is that a box of records?"

"It sure is," Shakima said not skipping a beat. "But I have nothing to listen to them on."

Tristram approached and flicked through, figuring if there was nothing to listen with Shakima would not mind someone manhandling the records. His mouth opened and closed. He felt a cough coming on, directing it away from the merchandise. "I've never seen this one before," he said.

"Bob Dylan, yes. I'd love to listen to it. But record players are so hard to find. I have a radio though of course. But they don't have that record so the point is moot. I don't know what it sounds like."

"No one does," Tristram said, kneeling. A light bulb appeared above his head. "I have an idea. I know a guy who knows a guy. I can get you this record played on the radio. Then you can hear it."

"You can!?" Shakima asked, almost yelling with excitement. Her eyes registered something and her excitement died a little. She straightened herself and patted down her shirt. "What's the catch?"

Tristram stood and faced her. "You let me keep the books I found."

"Easy."

"AND."

"Dammit."

"AND," he repeated. "You tell me what you use the data for."

"No."

"Damn. Will you at least tell me where Vault 87 is?"

"Oh, that I'll do."

"Just like that?" Tristram asked. "Why?"

"It's dead."

"Dead?! No. No no no. It can't be dead, not dead. Agatha told me there were people there."

"I don't know who Agatha is but she's telling you porkies."

"She's roughly my age. She might have been talking about when she was young."

"Then yes. It's only recently become... deceased."

"Recently?"

"Yup. Recently."

Tristram stroked his developing beard. "Recently you say..."

"Yes dammit." Shakima crossed her arms and started tapping a foot.

"How many vaults are still active?" Tristram asked, putting the record into his bag.

"One and a half," she said. A cocked eyebrow was her reply. "Okay. I won't tell you what the data is used for, but I will tell you another big secret. How about that?"

On his way out with the information a super mutant ambushed him again and dragged him back before Shakima. Once she reminded him what to do, he was let out of the building with no trouble. On his second trip to the ground another idea formed in the aftermath, or possibly as a result of, the concussion. Discussing it with Shakima, combined with the secret she had told him, the two formulated a plan.


	17. Chapter 17

17

The entrance to the vault was a giant gear. It had been popped out of its socket in the wall and rolled to the side by some equally giant mechanism. Another favour chalked up to Shakima. Tristram made a fist and tapped his heart twice as a show of thanks. She wouldn't be watching him this time. The cameras in the vault were dead, he was told.

He waltzed in. The lobby was filled with machinery, likely for operating the enormous door. It was opened by a kind of a drill that lowered from the ceiling to plug into the back of the gear door, acting as a kind of key.

Beyond that was a simple hallway. Pressing a switch on the wall by on the door at the end opened it, sliding to the side with a wisp of air. Inside to the right was a rectangular window that showed a kind of café in the style of the diners he sometimes came across in the city. Like those, it was in disarray. This one came with blood painted on the walls red leather seats. Everything seemed to close in on him. Simple monitors with glowing red keyboards were fastened to the walls as he went.

He pulled out his pistol and felt a strange ringing in his ears. Decades of firing guns had taken a toll on his hearing, and he was getting old besides. He continued through the vault. Pipes and machines creaked and whirred. The temperature was cool inside from some great industrial air conditioner within.

"A vault," he said to no one. "A real life, honest to god vault."

The pistol remained at the ready and Tristram's steps were slow and deliberate. Moments after opening his mouth to call out, he thought better of it. At the end of the hall was a T intersection. Signs similar to the lit up subway signs he had seen were mounted on the wall, each pointing this way or that. He followed the one that said 'Overseer'. If he was alive he would pay him a visit. If not, which was the more likely outcome, he would be sure to find a map to figure out a likely place where a saxophone was kept.

The halls were filled with bodies and blood, each in a different state of decomposition. The hairs on Tristram's neck tingled the further he walked, stepping over bodies of men, women, and teenagers. The pounding of feet on the smooth metal floors came from somewhere behind him. He whirred to see a blue flash speed by a corner. He flicked around again to make sure he wasn't being ambushed. The ringing in his ears worsened.

Discounting the areas with bodies, the vault was a marvel of engineering. Upper floors often had walkways, overlooking great black and silver machines that fired away, keeping everything humming.

"Wow."

Tristram reflected that it must be almost impossibly difficult to keep the temperature right and the water clean and the oxygen pumping and the food plentiful and the sewer system operational and everything else that needed to be done to keep a population of a thousand or more people happy and healthy. All things considered, it looked like they were doing a bang-up job.

Another intersection displayed two signs. One way the Overseer, the other, Library. The choice was clear. He turned left and headed to the book depository. Flicking the switch at the door, he stepped inside. It was unlike anything he had ever seen. Bookshelves lining all four walls. There was carpeting and long, semi circular desks with green lamps.

The books were all worn and used from decades and decades of being handled and read, but they were still in the best condition of any books he had ever seen. There were so many, but the bag would hold so few. Two hours passed where he scoured the shelves, using a ladder propped up against each row of shelves to climb to the top and examine the higher levels. He could always come back. This was as safe a place as any for the literature – for a little while.

When finished, he sat the duffel on a table in the centre of the room, packing it with what he could, to the absolute maximum of what he could conceivably survive with and lug across the wastes back to his home. The sound of a button pushing preceded the door sliding away and revealing a man in a blue jumpsuit.

"Oh. I was just... uh, I was..."

The man didn't seem to care. His head was tilted like a bona fide crazy person, his arms in front of him like a T-Rex's.

"Well. You're clearly a loony, so I'll just be edging past you to get to the Overseer's room. Unless you know where I can find a saxophone?"

"UUURAGHSPLURGYSPLURGYUH."

The man in the blue jumpsuit reading '87' in fat yellow numbers twitched and growled like an animal. Tristram felt the ringing in his ears. Either the pressure, air, or something related to not being adjusted to the vault was causing the problem to occur so frequently.

"Okay buddy," Tristram said raising a palm at him, "Now wait just a minnut naww..."

The raving derelict didn't listen to reason, lurching forward, reminiscent of the feral ghouls. Shandy whipped the gun around in his hand and smacked the attacker with the handle. He drifted away to one side and rolled partially of the table to fall into a heap on the soft carpet.

"Sorry," Tristram said. He picked the bag up again and opened the door, stepping out and following the path to the Overseer. The office was wide open, looking normal save for an upturned white coffee mug and scattered papers. The desk was inlaid in a small oval in the floor. Behind it were screens, in three rows – a small-scale version of Shakima's wall of surveillance.

He approached the computer and turned it on. Finding a map of the vault, he opened it. A floor plan, but difficult to read. He leaned over the desk, placing both palms flat on the hard wood. Thin green lines over a dark green, almost black screen. It looked twisted. It took him a minute to figure out how to switch between the vault's floors on the map and even then he made no sense of it.

Backing away, he cursed under his breath. It said nothing about anything. Scouring the filing cabinets revealed nothing of value, or nothing he had the time and desire to read over.

The sound of banging on metal came from outside. Pointing his gun out of the door, he checked both sides. A woman in a blue jumpsuit, with long pearl earrings was standing and facing the wall like she had been put in a corner for time-out to think about what she had done.

Bang. Bang. She slammed her forehead against the hard metal. Bang.

"Uh, excuse me, ma'am."

The woman turned. Their eyes met and Tristram was nothing in them, devoid of any kind of feeling or understanding. The ringing started up again and he decided it was enough. Stepping back inside he scoured the computer one last time. On one of the middle floors of the vault he saw a large square room, working his way back to where he started he calculated the path.

"Uh-huh. I think I know what you are," he told the computer.

He found the doors were like the others, but the signs at this end of the hall read 'Auditorium'. He followed at a swift jog. The entrance opened, leading to a small amphitheatre with soft carpet matching the library, and seating with light blue upholstery. The curtains on the stage were deep red.

Tristram slowly walked down the aisle. Everything was quiet, like the start of a grand show. As if any minute a man in a suit and top hat would emerge from behind the curtain and do a magic trick, or tell a joke. "What kind of shoes do ghosts wear? Boo-ts! Har har!"

He eased himself up onto the stage and turned to face the imaginary audience. He held his arms out wide and took a bow. Fat speakers facing the audience crackled. The surprise almost floored Tristram. He stood bolt upright and drew his weapon. Who Wears Short Shorts played across the theatre, slightly faster than he was used to hearing the song, as if the record were spinning just a little bit swifter than usual on a damaged record player.

Ripping open the partition, he stepped behind the curtains. Portable lights shined across the backstage. Music stands – a good sign. He opened hard black instrument cases to find nothing but smooth purple and silver padding.

The song played on. _Who wears short shorts?_

Gathering up what sheet music he could, he stuffed it in his bag.

_We wear short shorts._

In the far corner, loops of rope stretched from ceiling to floor as the control for the curtains. White chalk numbers were written across the metal at each one to indicate which rope controlled what. By a ladder lying across the floor was another black case, unopened.

_They're such short shorts._

He flicked over the silver clasp and opened the case. A saxophone! He closed it again. Picking the case up by the handle he ran back through the curtain. A man sat front row and centre, sarcastically slow clapping. With the point of his gun trained on the man, Tristram waited. Nothing happened. The man clapped incessantly, turning his head around every which way.

Had the music driven them mad? We Like Short Shorts wasn't his favourite song in the world but he found it hard to swallow that it could drive a vault full of reasonable, hand-picked individuals insane.

He had glimpsed through a window to the past, and, aside from the lunacy, he was impressed and a little nostalgic at what he saw. If only it had remained that way. He wondered whether this was the last Bastille of pre war days. There would be so much here and much to learn about the past and how to shape the future, not just in the form of books, but in every little thing about the vault from its head down to its feet.

Sneaking past the occasional vault-dweller, he wandered until the signs pointed him in the direction of the exit. At the great metal gear at the edge he stood for a moment and contemplated.

All his life he doubted the myth of the vaults, but all along they were the true goldmine. This was where he needed to be. To some he had been beaten to the punch, everything valuable stripped clean either by a lucky scavenger, or the vault people themselves taking everything they could on the journey out into the wastes when the time came. But some remained untouched museums of past lives. Those he would try to find when his plans were done, if he lived. When his best laid plans with Shakima were completed, and if he lived to tell the tale, he thought he might return to her, and scavenge the graveyard of the vaults.


	18. Chapter 18

18

The old girl was just at he had left her. The remains of the blades of Shandy's helicopter rotated in the wind. He slid the door open and dumped the duffel bag on the floor. His bones ached from carrying its weight all the way across the wastes. He carefully placed the saxophone in its case down beside it.

"Gunter I'm home."

The pilot remained silent but Tristram felt the love. He coughed into his fist and sat on a wall-mounted seat, arms loose at his sides. He coughed.

"Ugh. To be young again, Gunter. Ain't never gonna be what it was."

An hour passed, alone with his thoughts. He stood up and rummaged through his boxes to find a can of pork and beans. His knife was lodged in the cutting board where he left it, in a dusty corner. On a small fire outside he cooked his dinner under the moonlight. The wind had died and the valley was calm. Tristram listened to the crackle of the fire with a thin frown waxed across his face. In his dreams, he felt nothing but cold indifferent gears. Secret dreams of an electric paradise.

While his dinner bubbled in the pot, he poked at the ashes of the fire with a stick. The smell and the idea of food left him light headed and his stomach grumbled in response. In the wastes living on scraps and boot leather was understandable, because the wastes are harsh and society is harsher, seldom civilised. His mouth began to water despite the pork and beans.

They would do. He ate them with an old spoon and washed it down with warm Nuka Cola. A dog howled somewhere in the night. The moon, drifting behind small patchy clouds, disappeared for a time forcing Tristram to rely on the light of the fire. Just his face against a pitch black backyard and a pre-war war machine. He poked his head in the door of the helicopter and turn on the electric light. It was almost a sickly green. He went back, sat again and poked the ashes like a child playing with sand on some distant beach, letting it slip through his fingers while he smelled the salt of the ocean.

Small bubbles appeared on the surface again and he stirred them in the pot. Again he waited, thinking and poking at the ashes. Poking at the back of his mind and finding nothing in particular. He thought of Catherine her memory didn't bring a smile to his face. He tried but it would not come, even though he had greatly enjoyed their time together. Tristram wondered if she was the kind of woman who would leave a note.

When it was done, Tristram ate at his own pace and chewed slowly. In the morning he would venture out and hunt something for food. He cleaned up and walked back inside. "I tell you Gunter..."

Before he slept on the worn mattress he sat up and read by the green light. When he finished he sorted through the new haul. The Bob Dylan record, the numerous books, and the saxophone. Not as new and pristine and he or Agatha would have liked, but he took what he could get in the death trap of the vault. It looked good as new anyway. Perhaps it was.

Tristram avoided the temptation to blow into it out of fear of ruining something or Gunter finding out that he couldn't play saxophone.


	19. Chapter 19

19

Across the desert where the air wavered in the harsh sun he saw a lone blue figure. Tristram ran as fast as he could, yelling at the top of his voice, waving his arms like a lunatic. He passed under an overpass, near where the tribals had attacked him.

He sped across the desert, the man in the jumpsuit always just on the horizon, but his resolve was unshakeable now. He wanted to know where this one came from, and he had seen with his own eyes the danger of the wasteland to a vault dweller who came unprepared and without the prior knowledge. Perhaps he could write a survival guide for them.

Through rocks, paltry streams, and rubble, he moved across the desert until he lost sight of the blue man. He sat in the dirt with his legs crossed, defeated, and took a long drink of water. Again he wrapped patterned light brown and black rags around his face to stop himself from inhaling dirt and bugs.

There he sat, surrounding by a vast land of nothing as the sun began to set. Shielding the eyes from the sunlight a figure approached over the horizon.

He waited. Then waited. After that, waited some more. The figure that approached was a man with dark, sun-beaten skin and the hide of a wolf draped around his shoulders. He wore leather breeches and his arms were covered in simple tribal tattoos. Long strands of blue lines and curves and other meaningful patterns. On the hip was a large hunting knife, and in his hand a strange rectangular weapon.

"Is that a laser pistol?" Tristram asked from his seat on the ground.

"Nice to meet you too," the tribal said. Black paint-like mascara sat below his deep blue eyes. "They call me Nightwolf."

"Is that your name?"

"Why the fuck would they call me that if it wasn't my name?"

"Well it could be like, a nickname."

"What's a nickname?"

"Never mind. I'm Tristram."

"What are you doing around here Tristram? This place is dangerous."

"I know. I'm looking for someone I thought I saw."

"Was it me?" Nightwolf asked.

"No. Never mind. Does your tribe live here?"

The stranger extended a hand. "Come with me, I'll take you to them."

Tristram chose to trust the man with the laser pistol. He doubted a tribe would have books, but they may have supplies and a place to rest. Together they strolled through the big empty.

"You know, the last time I went wandering some tribals tried to kill me. What's up with that?"

"There are many tribes around here. It wouldn't have been us. We don't kill travellers. We trade with them. We've recently had other, smaller clans merge into ours, for want of numbers and resources. Others we've taken out when they have provoked us. Poked the bear one too many times, so to speak."

All the way Tristram turned his head left to right and back around again in search for the blue dude, but he was nowhere. "You sound dangerous," he said, looking around absent mindedly.

"We are. Make no mistake. But even the most dangerous peoples need allies."

"I wish I could be a strong ally to you," Tristram said, "But I'm only one man, and one who's getting old at that."

Nightwolf led him to an embankment by a river at the foot of a mountainside. The journey was long and it was dark by the time they arrived. A long, winding snake of fires burned in the crisp night air, following along the river with a series of animal skin tents.

Mutated beasts roasted over fires and tanned hides hung from lines stretched across the water. A tribal stood on a flat, smooth rock with a make-shift spear, fishing. The sole figure for a hundred meters, no one wanting to disturb him while he tried to gather food. They walked by and the man acknowledged Nightwolf with a nod.

"You seem to have it well here," Tristram observed.

"Every day is a fight for survival, but that's the case wherever one goes."

Tristram shrugged. "Why even bother living anywhere else then? You seem to have community. Like I've never seen."

"Isn't easy. My father told me the story of how our family came to be the tribals leaders, once."

"How?"

"My ancestors showed up and told everyone what to do. Simple as that."

"And they just could? Why?"

"They had the biggest stick."

"I see."

"They merged tribes to make greater powers. That's something I try to do even today, as we spoke about. If the Great Spirit allows it, I can continue."

"Great spirit?"

"God."

"Like the Biblical god?"

"No one reads the Bible here," Nightwolf explained.

"But you know of it. At least, you do. Why doesn't anyone read it?"

"They can't."

"Oh."

Further on the journey people sat outside tents and around fires smoking cigarettes and pipes. Children ran in between their legs and splashed in the river downstream, to the fisherman's woe. Tristram asked Nightwolf what he was doing out there in the big nothing when they met.

"Scouting," came the answer.

"For what?"

"People like you. People not like you. Whatever there is to find. Sometimes supplies, other times not."

They eased themselves onto a log away from it all, and looked up at the stars. Nightwolf had picked up a hunk of some unidentified meat on the way. Tristram took it when offered and munched away. "I have a question," he said with his mouth full. Nightwolf wiped his laser pistol down with a length of cloth soaked in water. The paint on the side – a small yellow square with a black lightning bolt inside, faded further away.

"What is your question?" Nightwolf asked.

"Why do you live out here when there are so many cities and towns and other places you could take your tribe to? And you know, live in relative peace."

A mole rat on the other side of the river came to drink and Nightwolf continued washing. "Here we are free like the animal. That's the first thing."

Tristram swallowed a hunk of meat. "There's more?"

"Much and more. Tribes were around before cities in this world, and the old one. We develop parallel to nearby places like Megaton and so on. Our numbers now are too big to be supported by that kind of place and they wouldn't let us in even if we could."

"Why not?"

"Isn't it obvious? If a giant hoard of strangers came to your doorstep wanting to live under your shelter and drink your water and eat your food, what would you say?" He jabbed Tristram in the sternum with a finger. "They turn the hoard away. Which is only natural. People have to protect what's theirs from the other."

"My father always used to say: speak softly, and carry a big stick. There's no harm in trying," Tristram said.

"We want to live in peace. We can out here. That's all – just peace."

"For now, yes," Tristram said. "That's all well and good when resources are seemingly infinite. What happens when they run dry and you need to develop agriculture?"

He shrugged. "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it."

The next morning Tristram awoke well-rested and made straight for the river to wash his face. Nightwolf sat with his legs crossed.

"Hello," Tristram said.

"Hello."

The cool, dirty water of the river refreshed him. Wiping his eyes, he asked, "Will you show me how the laser pistol works?"

Nightwolf let out a great, toothy smile. "Of course." He stood and aimed the laser across the stream. A black raven sat on the other side, pecking at the ground for worms. Nightwolf stood and narrowed his eyes. An age seem to pass before he fired.

A long stream of bright red energy spilled from the pistol with a high-pitched whine. The raven squawked and went up in a burst of flame, smoke, and tasty poultry. The river kept on flowing and Tristram smelled ash on the wind.

"How did you do that?" he asked.

The tribal man crooked his arm and relaxed. "You just point and shoot."

"But so accurately. That's crazy. I'm older than you, I've been shooting at things all my life and I'm nowhere near that kind of a marksman."

"You've got to train well. Survival is hard. One small slip and BLAMO. You're gone." He placed the pistol in the small tufts of grass at his feet. An old woman strolled by with a walking stick. She was short and her hair was pure white, thin like straw. She waved and said good morning.

"That's Baba Yetu. A lovely lady."

Tristram waved. She smiled and waved again.

"People her age aren't so rare here."

Tristram raised both eyebrows. "People my age are rare everywhere."

"Difference in lifestyle."

"Eating radioactive monsters must be the secret to become an octogenarian."

Nightwolf clasped Tristram by the shoulder. "Survival is hard," he repeated. "Life is hard. A little slow or a little late and you've gone from the top of the food chain to the bottom, eaten by ravenous birds. Remember that? Remember when I totally killed that bird? I think we'll have him for lunch. It's scary though. I train my hardest and stay alert always, so that I might protect this tribe. And also as not to shame my family. But you know what I'm getting at. Just a little slow, a little late, and you're wiped from this Earth, returned to the dust."

"I suppose I do," Tristram said.

"Now can I ask you a question? What's in your little black case?"

"Something even more rare than your laser pistol."

"Is it valuable?"

"Probably not to a man like you. But to me it means the world, or close to it."

"Are you so sure?" Nightwolf looked at him with a sly smile that Tristram had grown to like. He followed Nightwolf through the camp. Men and women of all ages everywhere, doing their part for the greater good. A sight to behold. The experience gave Tristram a great new perspective. Even at his age he was capable of that and glad for it.

On a patch of green grass a man was lying shirtless in the sun like a great hot-blooded lizard. Nightwolf jabbed him in the ribs with the point of his boot. "Play a tune," he said.

The man grunted and rolled over. Nightwolf kicked him again. "Play a tune you bitch."

The man waved a hand and grunted again, getting to his feet at his own pace. He moved a short way to pick up an acoustic guitar.

"In the past year I've seen more instruments that I ever have in my entire life," Tristram said, trying to recall exactly what his own age was.

"Not so hard to keep and maintain as, say, brass," Nightwolf smiled, "but if you can find an easy way to get guitar strings I'll name my first born after you."

The man strummed away. Tristram lay back in the grass and listened for as long as the music played. Children gathered around to listen, excited by the novelty. When the guitar faded, he wondered if they would ever hear one again when this one was past the point of making beautiful sounds. At least they could tune in to the radio and hear a nice saxophone solo. He hoped.

The tribals fed and took care of him for two more days before he decided it was time to set out again. His destination was Agatha's house to deliver the instrument and finally put his plan into action. The Bob Dylan record sat in his familiar grey duffel bag, waiting.

Tristram wiped a tear at the edge of his eye. The guitar man saw it when he placed his guitar back down. "What a baby," he whispered.

When he had composed himself Tristram found Nightwolf speaking with two young women, one of whom carried a baby. Both wore intact pre-war clothes – simple skirts, grey flats, a blue button-up.

"I have a request," Tristram said, waiting for their conversation to be finished.

"Always with the requests," Nightwolf smiled. "What can I do you for?"

"I want a tribal tattoo to mark my time here. Free like the animal."


	20. Chapter 20

20

The day came and he received his mark. It hurt like a bitch. Outside the camp and out of view, he rubbed at it, rolling part of the sleeve back to look at the intricate light blue pattern they had marked his skin with.

Travelling alone gave Tristram time alone with his thoughts, almost too much. Too familiar with the same patches of brown and collapsed buildings and gas stations, one must turn their minds to other things. Reading while walking is hazardous.

Melancholy thoughts came with melancholy songs when it was safe enough to listen to the radio. He chewed at snacks from his bag, keeping the grazing to a minimum. The food would not keep well and he could not live forever on the bounty of the tribe.

It was funny that his childhood memories involved picket fences like he was a boy of the old world living the American dream. He asked his friends what they were for because they would not be any good at keeping anything out, they were so small, as he was. One boy parroted something his father had told him, that when they were made, they weren't supposed to keep anything out. They simply showed everyone else who owned what. As if to say, look at my land, come into my castle.

He stood in front of the old house. Agatha's house, with the thatched roof and the great radio tower and radio dish, soon to be broadcasting those old world blues across the nation. At least, the areas the signals could reach. Perhaps everyone in the world would find themselves lucky some day, and lightning would strike the tower, extending the range somehow. At least that's how he assumed it would work. Then everyone could hear the songs and be uplifted by the power of music.

Raider would still stab raider, but perhaps they would sit down for a while and contemplate existence when they heard a sad song, as Tristram contemplated everything when walking so alone in a cold indifferent, dusty wild.

"I come bearing a gift," he said to Agatha, who had answered the door this time. The saxophone case changed hands. Tristram explained what had happened. Agatha was so ecstatic she hardly listened to a word. She danced back inside like a woman half her age and yelled for her husband to come and look, her eyes now taking up fifty percent of her face, alive with youth, reflected in the brass.

He came from somewhere deep in the house and stayed at the doorway between the kitchen and lounge. "That's really somethin'," he said. "You done good, Tristram. To think I doubted you."

"You doubted me?"

Phil waved a dismissive hand. "But never mind that. You got the saxophone. Aren't you going to give it a try honey?"

"Does the Pope shit in the woods?" Agatha asked. She thanked Tristram deeply and scurried back into the house, to where, he assumed, the broadcasting room was. Phil offered him a bed, but it was early in the day, the sun barely waking over the horizon. His day had just arrived and Tristram was eager to get to Oldtown to get the wheels spinning on his plan. He left after a drink of water while Agatha prepared.

On the small bridge just outside, overlooking a baby chasm, he retrieved the radio tucked away in his bag and switched it on. Agatha's familiar voice spoke to him.

"This little diddy is called Space Lion."

A pause. The saxophone started. It was smooth and mellow and wonderful. Everything Tristram hoped for. She played it slow with simple, elongated and low notes, like nothing he had ever heard before. Walking from the house and towards Oldtown, it reinvigorated his soul, like Agatha's eyes, and he felt as though he were a younger man again. He sniffled and wiped his arm to ease the pain of his tattoo.

_Worth it. Totally worth everything_, he thought. Agatha had told him on his previous visit that the radio reached Oldtown, but no further. He made sure he would savour it. Back at the helicopter he could not get the signal. _I might never hear this music again_, he thought, remembering the children looking up in awe at the guitar man strumming away, not a care in the world.

And behind him, an assailant. He felt a thin wire wrap around his throat. The radio fell and clattered on the ground and he reached for it to no avail. He realised what was happening and dug his fingers so deep into his neck trying to fish out the weapon that he drew blood. His eyes bulged. A kick from the murderer to the back of Tristram's knee sent him closer to the ground. Hands swiped and fought uselessly behind his head and the world began to get dark. The saxophone played on while his mouth opened and closed like a fish.

A shot rang out and the wire pulled him down to his back. He landed on something soft and squishy. A person. Tristram grabbed the wrists, wrenching them away from him and sucking in sweet, filthy air and he could breath again. The radio played on.

He gasped and lay on the ground, waiting, not caring what happened next. A silhouette appeared above him, sun scorching the back of it, obscuring his vision. Tristram coughed and the figure extended a pale hand. He took it and got up.

That old familiar jumpsuit, blue with the yellow 101 printed on the front and back. Either he had gone loopy, or Tenpenny had experienced a change of heart, taken a stroll, and decided to save him. But it was neither. "Hello," a stranger said.

"... hello. Do I know you?"

"I don't think so."

"Why did you save me?"

"You've been following me for days and I wanted to know why. Then you had the whole dying thing going on and I wasn't doing anything, so I shot the dude. See?" The man pointed. The body of Phil sprawled out on the brown dirt, bleeding profusely and sufficiently dead.

"Phil?" Tristram gasped.

"I guess so."

"But he seemed so... well actually it all makes sense now." Tristram shrugged and turned again. The man was clearly from a vault, just like the others. Like the man that had fallen victim to the super mutant. He debated informing his new friend.

News had likely not reached him. Like old lovers with only letters, or sometimes not even that, word travelled slow as the grave in D.C unless you were fortunate enough to have access to a ham radio. People often left and left for good, living out their separate lives so close but so far away, never knowing an ex lover or friend could be just over the horizon. And they would never know.

"Why was he trying to kill you?" The man spoke with a strange, unfamiliar accent.

"Guess he didn't want the secret out."

"What secret?"

"I know about the vaults. Say, why do you even wear those things around anyway? Surely there are other clothes you could wear."

"Could but don't. Vault jumpsuits aren't actually all that rare in my experience. Out here, not in the vault. Obviously my experience in the vault would dictate that they wouldn't be rare. But I mean out here, people wear them sometimes, it's no big deal. To me it's like hiding in plain site. If I wore brand spanking new pre war clothes and started strutting about, talking funny and asking odd questions, that would be, if anything, more suspicious. Like a mutant creature dressed in drag suddenly sitting down with your family to eat dinner and no one but you seems to notice."

"I suppose that's true."

"So he attempted murder because you know about vaults?"

Tristram rubbed his neck. "One in particular, and I think he wanted to keep the location a secret. Not that I would tell anyone."

"Which vault? Is it still...?" The saxophone continued to play slow and steady from the radio, the back of which was beginning to stain in a pool of blood.

Tristram shook his head. The vault dweller looked at his feet.

"So what are you doing out here?" Shandy asked to break the silence.

"Scouting. Seeing what the world holds."

"To see if 101 is ready to come out and face the music?"

"No. We'll probably never leave. But the Overseer likes to know, all the same. No one else does. Think of it as black ops. And one of our scouts went missing months and months ago, so now they're getting me to find him."

"If it's secret, what is the Overseer going to tell the family about some vault guy that just up and vanished in a vault that never opens?"

The vault man rubbed his bare chin and said, "A fair question. Industrial accident if I remember right. Terribly bloody, no proper remains to look at."

Tristram shuddered and the music stopped. Smooth jazz followed the silence. "I wish you hadn't killed him though," the vault dweller said, looking down at Phil's body. "Not that you could have known. Was he working alone?"

"Well, that's his wife," Tristram said, pointing at the radio.

The vault man stared for a time, then said, "This new world is weird, man. I don't think we're ready for this."

"No you idiot, his wife is the one playing the saxophone on the radio."

"Oh. That makes sense."

"That it do."

"Tell you what, I'm on my way back to the vault. Would you like to come?"

Tristram's head exploded. "But you never open. Why would the Overseer just let me walk on in like the king of England and do whatever I feel?"

"He won't. But he may want to talk with you in secret. Secretive secret. Sneaky, sneaky, secretive secret-ness. The rest of the vault wouldn't know."

"What could he possibly learn from me?" Shandy asked.

"The dangers of isolationism, I suppose."

It was perfect. His circuitous plan almost completed a step by accident. He would not have to somehow find a way back into Tenpenny Tower where he was no longer welcome. This was better than he could have hoped for. One untouched vault would naturally lend credibility and trust towards another.

"But... gah, I don't want you to come out. The old world has to be preserved. Your vault is a perfect specimen. Uhh, no offence or nothin'," he said, rubbing his bicep and neck.

"We've been this way for two hundred and fifty years. We can't go on forever. We can't. Sooner or later we have to get up and leave, and begin again somewhere new."

"Even if it means death?"

"Even if."

* * *

><p>They entered in the night. All the lights were dimmed down, but still on and lighting their way. Vault 101 was not identical to 87, but the designs were, intuitively, remarkably similar. His ears did not ring at all.<p>

"Behind this door is the Overseer. Tell him about your life, and the wastes. Try to convince him that we can't stay this way. He might listen to you."

"Why?"

Martin shrugged and whispered, "When he sees how well you've done and the age you've reached, he'll realise there's life after vaults."

"Does he know I'm coming?"

"Yes. He wouldn't be awake at this hour if he didn't."

Tristram looked back down the hall. "Listen, this uh... might take a while. Can I meet you at the library?"

On their uneventful trip to the destination, Tristram gave the usual spiel about his thirst for pre-war literature. The man seemed receptive, becoming somewhat jittery, rubbing his hands together at the idea.

"The books thing, right. I haven't forgotten. It's just down this way, straight on, no turns and you'll get there. But you better have some creep to you. I don't want no drama."

Tristram nodded and let himself into the office. It was identical to the Overseer's office in vault 87, only in better condition. He wondered if Shakima was watching him, much to her surprise. The Overseer looked up from his desk. He wore the standard jumpsuit, with round eyeglasses and a red baseball cap.

"Hello," he said wearily, taking his cap off in a show of respect and manners.

"Hi."

"Nice to meet you. I'm Daniel Owens."

"Tristram Shandy."

They shook hands.

"Now that's an outworld name if I ever heard one, har har! I understand Martin wants you to speak with me."

"That is correct."

"What's in the bag?"

"Just my usual supplies."

Daniel leaned back in his chair, gesturing at Tristram to begin his talk on the merits of leaving the vault for the great wide world outside it. "The wasteland is hell on Earth," Tristram said. Daniel clasped his hands behind his head, unphased and unsurprised.

"Well I'm not surprised," he said.

Tristram continued, "It's no so bad really though. There are civilised societies out there. Megaton, for example. A city built over an unexploded nuclear bomb. There's Tenpenny Tower, packed to the rafters with high society. The Black Freighter is good, unless you live in The Pit. But all and all it's not terrible. There's gambling in Oldtown. The outskirts of the capital are liveable. People pass by everyday. They don't say hello and eye each other with suspicion, but nine out of ten encounters are uneventful. There's some level of music and theatre and agriculture. It's... nice."

"It doesn't sound... too bad I... guess."

"It's not. But make no mistake. There are people killing, people dying, poor medicine supplies and skill. My shoulder is still paining from an injury I sustained months ago. Some crank doctor did his best to heal me. Raiders, tribals, the works. Cannibals. Super mutants, even. I've been around. Your scout can't tell you all that."

"By God."

"Uh-huh."

"Well. I'll have to think about this. This in here," he said, gesturing around the room. "This is safety and security, and it can sustain us a long time. Yes, I'll have to think indeed. Perhaps leaving isn't the best. Which is what I suspected, really. You've mostly just affirmed my suspicions."

Tristram looked at the cold metal ground. "If that's how you feel. Good talk. Sleep on it, and I'll be out of your way now," he tapped the wooden desk twice and showed himself out, tiptoeing to the library down the hall.

It was exactly like the one he had already seen. Martin sat at a desk under a light, reading. A record player on the desk beside him played Cole Porter's Anything Goes. The walls were very soundproof, as they had to be, to allow for sleep with the constant, harsh running of cruel machines. Tristram asked whether he could take a bag full of books. Martin said that he could, so long as he was quick. The wasteland needed that old knowledge more than Vault 101.

Climbing the ladder he saw that the book supply was the same. Since he had the best, he settled for the choices that were hard to leave behind.

"So what happened?" Martin asked at the base of the ladder.

Tristram examined the spine of a book. "I talked to him about the wasteland. Said it wasn't so bad, look at me, etcetera. Tried to convince him to that life out there is liveable."

"And?"

"He said he needs to think on it. I've done all I can do."

Martin paced around the room, thinking and rubbing his chin.

"One more thing," Tristram said, jumping down from the ladder and putting the final book in the duffel bag, carefully, on top of the record.

"Yes?"

"Can I have a jumpsuit?"

"Oh hell no you aren't moving in here. Are you nuts?"

"I don't want to. I just want a jumpsuit."

"Oh. Well. Okay, I guess. I'll find you a spare if you wait at the entrance for me."

"Thank for your time," Tristram said with a smirk.


	21. Chapter 21

21

Tristram was greeted by two pretty women and a securitron robot at the entrance of Oldtown. He arrived when the sun went down, asking at the courier's office for a good man. The owner was leaving and told him to look for Gordon, who was at the casino, as he was most nights. He left with little more than a vague description.

In the street men rolled dice against a church wall, too ragtag for an establishment of the finer things, too addicted to gambling to try their hand at something else. Most were drunk, and drinking. They waved him over for a game. He politely declined.

In the past he would have accepted, but now he headed somewhere better. His gambling was wonderful, the finest a man could do, and almost one-sided. Conventional wisdom told that the House always wins, but Tristram made a strong case to the contrary. Many a strong, hard slap had come his way, and hands were thrown, along with drinks and hard words.

He praised Oldtown despite it. Almost everything was closed on Sundays, including the gambling dens large and small. Fond memories welled within him, of chasing one thing or the next down the crowded streets. Doors were open more back then, less barred windows, less boarded up row houses and red swishes of paint to ward off evil spirits.

Women of the night propositioned him as we walked by a series of brothels, all clumped together. He had read in a book once that like businesses were better off close together, as opposed to far apart, though he couldn't remember why. It seemed to him counter intuitive. He ignored their advances, hands kept in his pockets, and continued down the paved streets in the twilight, to their distress.

Inside the casino the speaker system played a radio station. It wasn't Agatha's. After the incident with her husband, it was doubtful she would be on the air for a while to come. Unless music was her escape. Then she would be on the air more than she ever had been. She may not last long in the wastes alone, but there was nothing to be done for it. If he could have had it his way, Phil would be alive.

He approached the cashier with a thirst for a card game. The woman happily exchanged most of the caps he had amassed over the months trawling through houses and rubble and robbing the dead, giving him clean, round casino chips of different colours. Blue, red, green, white.

Gordon sat on a stool at the blackjack table. Tristram's favourite. So sweet. He took the seat next to him. One stool down was a tall Asian woman with Straight black hair, short dangling earrings and bright red high heels, which she tapped together waiting for her cards. Another man was directly to her left, wearing a faded baseball cap backwards on his head.

Tristram ran his fingers along the weathered green felt of the table, laying his chips down.

"Hello sir. Feeling lucky tonight?" the dealer asked. He was tall and bald with a great grey bushy beard and a black vest over a black and white striped dress shirt. He gripped the cards with long fingers, ready to deal.

"I certainly am."

"That's a lot of money," said a low voice to his right. "I'm Gordon." He reached his hand out for Shandy. He took it. Gordon had wisps of smooth, black hair. Behind his head he had tied a small ponytail. He lowered his glasses. "You picked a good table."

"Shit, all the same to me," Tristram answered, giving him a passing glance. The players finished off their hands. Gordon raked in a small pile of chips.

Tristram inhaled and threw two green chips onto the table. Two twenty-fives. The rectangle of plastic slid along, stopping neatly in front of him. Then the other. The dealer showed a four of spades. An inauspicious start. The cards totalled fifteen and his poker-blackjack face remained blank.

The woman in the red high heels tapped them together. Tristram moved his hand horizontally across the air to indicate a stay. To occupy his time while the others second guessed themselves, he tried to guess the dealer's name. Augustus? Charles? He glanced at the name tag. The correct answer turned out to be Tim.

"Two. Now nine. Fifteen. That makes twenty-one. Dealer wins."

"My luck had to run out eventually," the lady said.

She was correct. The pile of chips in front of her diminished to a lone few. It was the same with the man beside her. Pushing them all at the dealer, she took a sip from a clear wine glass. Tristram decided to follow with a single blue chip – one hundred.

He decided to speak to her, "Don't worry. I believe in you."

She grinned in return and her lipstick shined. He turned back to Gordon. "And you."

"Maybe," he said, taking a sip.

A Jack and a seven came while Tim displayed a six. A definite stay. He waved his hand. "So what do you do?"

"I'm a courier. What about you?"

"I wander the wastes looking for what I need."

The dealer's turn came and he drew. "Twenty two. Bust and everybody wins."

Tristram let no emotion show on his face. He put down two greens again, coming up with sixteen to Tim's Queen. He debated the correct move with himself. "Hit." He tapped the table. A black three. Nineteen! He breathed an undetectable sigh of relief. Tim drew and reached eighteen. Tristram collected his winnings, then two more greens went in. Two face cards. The Ace of Spades sat in front of the dealer and he opened his arms to the group. "Insurance? Anyone? Insurance? Going once, going twice."

Shandy did nothing but stroke his chin and cough. Insurance was not the correct move. It never was. Tim had somehow got hold of a black Queen. Blackjack, but Tristram the seasoned gambler remained unphased. Specious reasoning to pay any attention to that outcome. He had made the right move.

Gordon had still not taken the bait. Tristram waved a waitress over and ordered a Nuka Cola. "And what I need, my friend-"

"Is a Cola"

"No. Well, yes. But also, I need the services you can provide."

Gordon at last turned to look at Tristram. "Well, all right, but I just deliver things."

Tristram showed his palms. "Naturally."

"Sir," Tim said.

"Huh? Oh, sorry. Wasn't paying attention." Shandy threw a hundred 'dollars' out. Thirteen to the dealer's ten. A clear hit taking him to twenty three. Bust. In the distance he heard the sound of slick plastic cards being shuffled and dealt and chips clacked as they were thrown about. The song on the radio was Rama Lama Ding Dong, by The Edsels. Nice fast music – the kind that made you feel good and spend money.

Two blue chips in. A hard fourteen against three. A stay. Tim made nineteen from that three and took the money with a smile.

"Crap," the far off man said. Despite it he appeared to be doing well for himself. The Asian woman laughed at her two face cards and collected her money.

"So I need you to deliver a record, with a note, to a man in Megaton. He owns the SuperMart."

Gordon thought about his answer. Three blue chips. Tristram straightened his cards. Tim took out twenty. Shandy grit his teeth at his own nineteen while Gordon turned to him. "You want my advice?"

"No."

"I say you cut and run. Take your losses. Let it go," he said and waved a hand at him, placing his own chips into stacks sorted by colour.

"I'll be fine. I told myself I wouldn't back down."

The courier sniffed and lifted his glass from its coaster. "People say a lot of things. That what you told yourself before? The money's real now, ain't it? It's a bit different now, I bet."

"Who dares wins."

Four hundred on the table. It would feed him for a month, or more, and he had just laid it down like it was a stack of measly caps.

A hard seventeen to Tim's two. Things were looking up. The man at the far edge yelled in delight. The lady clicked her heels together and sighed. "No luck, eh darling?" the man in the cap asked her. "Not yer game I see."

"Oh yeah? Well, you're wearing a hat inside."

"That dude is wearing sunglasses!" He pointed to one of the few onlookers. The man pointed at his own chest in confusion and mouthed a word.

While the woman and the mysterious backwards cap man argued, Tristram received his Nuka Cola at last. Around them men were in suits and polished shoes, women in nice dresses and skirts, smelling of modern perfume. Who Put the Bomp by Barry Mann came on the radio – one of Tristram's favourites. That would not let him bet more, or get comfortable.

"So do you think you can do it?" he asked Gordon, who was playing with his money.

"I suppose I could."

"When that's done I'll need something else."

Gordon breathed sharply from his mouth. "Gamblers. Always wantin' more."

"Tough break" the woman said. She had lost on a fifteen, cleaning out the last of her money. The stool slid across the carpet and she turned and left in a hurry. Tristram took the remains of her drink and consumed it. He liked the Nuka Cola better.

A red chip met green fabric. Five hundred. Only fifty to his name remained as he turned over two green chips in his hand. His own low breathing was the only sound in the world. Gordon said something clever but he missed it, not caring.

"A drink, sir?" A waitress in plain black and white holding a silver tray slid up to his side. Her hip touched the black rubber edge of the table. The shine of the tray made him look away.

"No thank you."

The waitress observed his situation. "I think you should buy a drink."

"Later." He tapped the table once more and the dealer's card came his way, a red nine this time. He watched her hips sway as she moved away to find another player. Probably one playing higher stakes. She wore plain black heels with a thin strap at the ankle, legs for days. He tapped again.

"Shit, no."

The dealer's card found him, busted him, and Tim took away the chips. Murmurs from the watchers went up.

"That was an accident," Tristram explained. He had fallen victim exactly the way they wanted him to; an old dog and older tricks, they had played him for a sucker.

"I don't believe you."

"I wouldn't either." He bet a green chip.

"Since you may soon be departing, tell me now what the second part is," Gordon said.

"After you give this man named Steve the record and the instructions, you need to get directions from him on where to find Galaxy News Radio. Despite the name, they don't broadcast all that much news, songs mostly."

"Which is what the record is for?" Gordon asked, taking a cigarette from his pocket.

"Yes. The instructions will be for them too. Give the record to whoever is in charge and make sure he follows the instructions to the letter."

Gordon lit and puffed. "Ahhh. Okay. But what if the radio man remains intransigent?"

"If the promise of a brand new, unheard record isn't enough, pay him off."

"With what?"

Tristram left the question hanging for now and slowly, painfully, found the way back to one thousand. His luck picked up over several hands, with a blackjack taking him to fourteen hundred and twenty five. He bet the extra green chip from the windfall and lost. A dealer bust took him up to break even.

Tristram leaned over the table with his elbows resting on it. The tattoo showed. "Now where did you get that?" Gordon asked.

"Tribals. I spent some time with them."

"Now that's interesting."

"I'm an interesting man."

Tristram climbed his way back to Twenty nine hundred. Gordon made progress too, but slower. He was enjoying his fifth drink but still lucid.

The plan did not hinge on this, but he would have to dip further into his own pocket and valuables to make it happen. Blue chip in. The deal brought him ten. On the hit he came up with an Ace. Twenty one. Tim stayed at seventeen. Leaning back, he consumed his Nuka Cola and slammed it on the table. "With all of that," he said, standing up and stretching his muscles. The tattoo still ached.

"All of this? Sweet zombie Jesus."

"Yep."

"Why?"

They walked through the casino and Tristram collected his bag at the door, digging through and handing over the record and the instructions.

"Well? Why?" he repeated.

Tristram turned to leave dramatically in a way that he thought would look cool. "Chances are I'll be dead soon anyway, so the money is no matter to me." He stepped outside to face the wind and the coming storm.


	22. Chapter 22

22

Every day at midday he turned on the radio. For weeks it was the same. News around the wasteland. Reports of soldiers, reports of super mutants, reports of untapped treasure troves of old world technology or food, reports of flying monsters and giant lizards, of six legged evils that go bump in the night, or a giant lake monster, of satanic rituals deep in the heart of The Black Freighter, reports of a super mutant in power armour. If not that then music.

But not the kind he wanted to hear.

Tristram walked up and down the interior of the helicopter, brushing his teeth with an old brush, the bristles worn away, the edges frayed. "Maybe tomorrow, Gunter," he said sliding a door open and spitting in the dirt.

Tomorrow came whether anyone was around to observe it or not, and with it an excited announcement. "Ladies and gentlemen of the capital of America, we have something new and exciting for you today, and when I say new, I mean new. A never before heard record found and sent to us by an anonymous donor. Now I've had a listen to it, and I'm gonna play you my personal favourite." The radio announcer played the Bob Dylan record, perhaps the first time it had been heard in two and a half centuries.

The next day it played again, the same song at the same hour.

_Come gather 'round people, wherever you roam._

It was time. Tristram ran and grabbed his familiar duffel, and another exactly like it, packing both to the brim with all the books he owned. They each weighed a ton, as unsafe here as anywhere, and equally as useless unless he started doing something with them. Starting something, which ironically, would be finishing what he had started.

He grabbed the folded 101 jumpsuit from the empty seat beside Gunter and rushed to put it on, one leg at a time.

_And admit that the waters around you have grown, and accepted their tune, you'll be drenched to the bone._

He returned to the cockpit, to Gunter's dusty old bones. He patted his dead friend on the skull. "Goodbye old friend. Until the day we meet again. Maybe on the other side I'll finally get to ask you where you were going all this time."

_If your time to you is worth saving, then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone, oh the times they are a' changin'._

A harmonica kicked into the song. Tristram heard the sound of beating wings. Mechanical ones, hovering just above his own rusted pile of junk. A real, working helicopter, looming over its departed brethren. The old and the new. Tristram coughed and pulled the side door as wide as he could. Dirt flew up at his feet and danced in circles around the valley. Shielding his eyes he looked up.

_Come writers and critics who prophesise with your pen, and keep your eyes wide the chance won't come again._

The great silver helicopter sat in the sky like a fat bird. Slowly it lowered itself down in the open.

_And don't speak too soon for the wheel's still in spin, and there's no tellin' who that it's naming._

It landed with its back facing Tristram. A ramp lowered, pressing into the dirt and two hulking figures emerged, each wore heavy plated black armour. Power armour, developed for the war to give America the edge over its enemies. They wore helmets to match, with built-in gas masks and bright yellow eyes. One awkwardly handled the immense weight of a laser gatling gun, the other carried a simple plasma rifle.

_For the loser now will be later to win._

The plasma rifle man stepped forward. "You our man?"

_Oh the times they are a' changin'. _

Inside they played the same radio station – that harmonica again, pleasantly ringing in everyone's ears. A man in a black and grey jumpsuit sat in the cockpit. He turned around when Tristram took his seat against the wall. "Hi hi. Name's Elvis Costello. I'll be your pilot." He was smoking a short brown cigar.

_Come senators, congressman, please heed the call, don't stand in the doorway, don't__ block up the hall._

"Not far to go I take it," the pilot said.

"Seems that way. You tell me."

The pilot flicked his switches and took the bird up. The smoke in front of him rose slowly, almost in slow motion.

"So you guys are really..." Tristram started.

"Yes," Costello answered.

"Really?"

"Yes."

"That's amazing."

"Yes."

Tristram did his best to look out of the front window. There were no seatbelts, permitting him to stand, hold on to something, and watch the wasteland pass him by. A surreal experience that made him light headed. Here, inside the machine, so far above the human filth. This was it. His endgame.

_For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled._

In the temple in Megaton, Dr. Strangelove sits legs crossed and hands on his knees, eyes half open. The robe blowing in the wind. Trying to remain thoughtless, to focus on the breathing. Nothingness. No self. A mosquito buzzes around his ear and he slaps it away and continues, focusing on the nothing.

_The battle outside raging, will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls. Oh the times they are a' changin'. _

In an apartment in the remains of downtown D.C, a woman lies on the floor, squeezing the hand of her friend and another man. Coated in sweat and breathing heavily, she is about to give birth. The man is more indifferent than both of the girls. But he does his best. And Honest Abe and his girlfriend shake hands with a wealthy buyer, leading a pack of men across the wastes headed for Pittsburgh.

_Come mothers and fathers, throughout the land, and don't criticize what you can't understand._

Smoke rises from a long cigarette burning at the top of a grand hotel. A man in a crimson bathrobe watches nothing happen in a vast wasteland, so wonderfully still. Like most places in the world, nothing is happening. There are no smiles. He watches with intensity, as though expecting something to happen. Nothing does. And he longs for a particular woman.

_Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. Your old road is rapidly ageing. _

Outside a radio station, a courier is being attacked and mugged by a gang of wanderers in need of something to do. When he is within an inch of his life, a super mutant approaches and fires on all of them, cutting them down with a Chinese assault rifle. The blood washes away in the first rain for months. A sheriff in Junktown is arresting a wanted man by the name of Alan.

_Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand._ _Oh the times they are a' changin'. _

The helicopter flies over a small mountain range and a fenced off section with signs warning of radiation. In the bowels of Megaton a man leans on a railing and watches an atomic bomb float above the abyss. He contemplates existence while in other caverns, in The Pit of The Black Freighter, small folk gather around listening to music and trading ideas, living in their own filth. A woman named Catherine hides herself away, trying to get adjusted.

_The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast._

Back in Megaton, in her home with a small dirty mirror, a grown woman tries on her very first dress and weeps at the beauty of her own reflection. She tells herself she is beautiful. Down the street in the church, men and women in purple robes preach to the crowd about the virtues of constance and prodissitude. A million miles away, a man named Nightwolf leads a circle in prayer to the Great Spirit of the Great Unknown.

_The slow one now will later be fast as the present now will later be past._

A ghoul, Shakima, watches over the monitors shining their light on her, thinking about all the people of her long past.

_The order is rapidly fading, and the first one now will later be last. _

Here and now, Costello looks at the the ground below and speaks up. "We can't get you any closer, Tristram. This is as far as we go unless we want to get shot out of the sky. We'll set you down here. Sound good?"

"Sounds good."

_Oh the times they are a changin'._

As they landed, he turned at the exit. "One more thing. I figured you'd know. What's the deal with the vaults? What are they for?"

"To preserve life?" Costello said, like it was the most apparent thing in all the world. He took his cigar from his mouth and blew smoke.

Tristram laid a hand up above the door, looking out at the ground coming up below him. "Don't piss in my ear and tell me it's raining. What are they really for? I saw one where everyone was driven batshit crazy. Probably would have joined them if I didn't get out when I did. Some horrible subliminal ringing message... thing."

"The Enclave didn't build the vaults, Shandy. Take it up with Vault Tec," Costello said, putting the cigar back in his gob.

"They would have been contracted by the government."

"And we ain't them."

"You used to be."

"But it ain't me. I didn't make them."

"But you know why they were built."

"To preserve life," he repeated. The armed men watched the conversation with casual interest.

"And?"

"And find answers."

"To what?"

"Life's great questions, about what a person, and a society, can withstand," he said. And that was that.

Tristram got ready to jump a small distance to the ground. He picked up both of his bags, leaving them hanging loosely at his sides. "You don't need vaults to tell you that," Tristram said, not turning back to face the men. "Just look around you."


	23. Chapter 23

23

Tristram slung each duffel bag over a shoulder. The desert rolled over him. The journey had taken less than half an hour. He was tired. He began to sweat under the blue Vault 101 jumpsuit. With a hand near his shoulders securing each strap, he walked towards Boomtown thinking of Catherine and wondering if the Enclave still observed Valentine's Day.

Whenever someone approached the massive chain link fence, the residents of Boomtown shot them to pieces with missile launchers. Their parts would be torn apart from one another and rot. He decided to walk straight on towards the entrance, on what remained of a weedy road. There were indents everywhere, like the surface of the golf balls he had hit.

Given that no one except a select few knew the vaults were real, there was no guarantee the residents of Boomtown actually came from one. With Shakima's help he had puzzled it out. They had left recently (recently being relative to her own perspective) from Vault 42. This vault had been given an ungodly amount of explosive ordinance from Vault Tec. Since it was never used in the Vault, they still had it, and used it to protect their territory. Hearing Tristram's third-hand stories of Boomtown, Shakima figured it must be an old airfield she had seen on a map.

Tristram squinted to see a blurred fence on the horizon and a gate, topped with barbed wire. The helicopter backed away, back to wherever it had come from. Back to the fortress of the Enclave – the last gasp of the land of the free. "If anything happens to the Enclave," the plasma rifle man had said, sitting beside Tristram on the ride, he finished the thought with a cut-throat motion, "Kiss America good bye."

Their radio now played Why Can't We Be Friends as the helicopter drifted away back over the mountains. Waving goodbye, he wondered what would become of them and the American dream. The ominous sound of the helicopter faded in time.

Holding his arms out wide, like he was telling someone about a fish he caught that was THIS big, he walked the road. The path was long and tiring, the sun as harsh as ever. Tristram felt his old skin burning. Part of him wished he had taken his length of cloth to cover his face with, then decided it would be better this way. The residents might be less inclined to blow up a man whose face they can clearly see. Whose eyes they can almost look into.

Arms still outstretched, he heard something over the fence. Then something that sounded like a twisted version of his old friend helicopter, if it were about to fall out of the sky and crash. A missile landed and a great explosion welled up far to his right. He could almost feel its searing fire.

The explosions continued. Another one to the left this time, and closer. A missile landed not half a football field's distance in front of him. He paused in his step and shielded his face with a hand. The bright light was almost too much, and he was about to swallowed whole. Any minute now.

Beyond the gate, in a make-shift tower of wood and corrugated iron, a man in a blue jumpsuit watched with binoculars, directing his men behind the gate to fire. Some had towers of their own. Mines had been planted and exploded long ago, either by missiles or wanderers in the night forcing them to rely on their own aim.

The man with the binoculars zoomed in as far they would allow, and saw what he saw. He ripped them away from his face and waved his arm about.

"STOP! STOP! For the love of God!"

A man in the next tower lowered the nose of his weapon. "What? Is you nuts?" he yelled.

"He's wearing a vault jumpsuit. Hold fire."

"Anyone can wear a jumpsuit you clod. They're probably everywhere in the wasteland."

Shouting over the ringing in his own ears, the leader explained, "Coming here most people wear something with a bit more armour, or something light, for running."

"A vault jumpsuit _is_ light."

"And he ain't running."

The men lowered their big guns. Tristram smiled and looked up at the sky. His plan had worked, for now at least. The gate was not as rusted as most he had come across. He dropped the bags. Men in blue and yellow jumpsuits imprinted with the number 42 came running, sliding in the dirt to point their side-arms at his face. Tristram held his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

"Hello," the leader said.

"Hi." Tristram gave a tiny wave.

"Can I... help you?"

"I'm Tristram Shandy. I came here to speak with you and your Overseer."

The man lowered his gun. "We... don't have an Overseer any more." He looked at the number on Tristram's front. "Do you?"

"I'm not from a Vault."

Guns were cocked.

"But!" Tristram continued. "I'm a friend to one. This one," he said, underlining the number with his finger. "I collect books. Pre-war books. See these bags? They're full of them. I want to keep them safe and my home isn't good for that. It's a dump. But this place could protect them for the future. You can keep them safe."

The leader eyed the bags with suspicion. A man to his left spoke to him, "Gough, what if they're bombs? Bombs that will blow us up? With explosions. The gate will be hanging wide open. Also we'll be dead."

Everyone jumped a step back and re-aimed their weapons. "Open the bag," Gough said, "Nice and slow like."

Tristram lowered himself as slowly as his old back allowed, unzipping the bag and showing the contents of both to the residents of Boomtown.

He was ordered to move them around so the men could see underneath. This was no ruse. More books. Books for days. He closed the bags back up and the gate was pulled aside.

"You're lucky," Gough said, "Normally the only time we open the gate is when someone dies a little too close and we don't want the younger ones seeing the body in any... great detail."

"You don't normally bury the bodies?"

"No."

Tristram looked at the men. About twenty five of them, eyes bright, skin pale, shielded from the sun most of the day. Their clothes were not faded, looking almost as new as his own. These were not hardened men of the capital wasteland. Able to protect themselves easily here, but out there, they would be eaten alive. And when the missiles ran dry the gate would fall.

"Let's show you around. Then I'll take you to Pearl. She'll decide what's to be done."


	24. Chapter 24

24

Pearl was an old woman with short white hair. She relaxed at a coffee table inside a shack by the main hangar of the airfield, sipping at a coffee. Tristram left his bags by the door and took a seat. They made the introductions. The door swung open in and a hot breeze ebbed in.

"So Tristram, what is it you're doing here? You're the only outsider anyone here has ever seen that wasn't through a powerful set of binoculars. The only living one anyway." She sipped again. The shack was done up nice, like an office. A computer on the desk by the wall, and rows of filing cabinets and lockers.

"I collect pre-war books. I do it because I want to. I want to preserve the past so that someday the world can begin again, with the right tools, and the right leadership. I had an opportunity to give these books to another group, who took me here. But I didn't. I have this nagging feeling they might not treat them right. Knowledge belongs with the people. When the time comes, they need to be able to make an informed decision. An educated decision. Fiction, non-fiction, I've got both in spades. The bags are packed full. My arms still feel like they're gonna drop off from carrying all that weight. I didn't give it to them, I want to give them to you. To hold on to. Here, protected away where they can be held until the time is right."

"You've made a wise choice. But we were thinking of expanding."

"Why?"

"Why do you think? Do you think we can live like this forever? Some of the young ones, they want to, believe or not. You would think it would be the other way around. But mama Joyce raised no fools. Isolationism is not the way. The vaults were made to house the best for the future. Locked away so we can, as you say, start again. To me that's what the 42 means to us. A new beginning, from the ground up. We can be that beginning, or at least help ignite it. But not here. I'm old and can't move very far, but when I'm gone..."

"I understand," Tristram said.

"We'll house your books in safety. Even though we may move on someday, they'll be as safe here as anywhere. Protected in a library. Perhaps that will be a nice project for the boys."

"Sounds nice."

"But we need something from you in return."

Tristram began to doubt his life choices. Sighing, he lowered his head to his knees. "What do you need?"

Pearl put her cup down and took a bite of a hard biscuit sitting on the table. She chewed slowly, looking around the room and thinking. Outside, two of the Boomers were joking with each other about something.

"We can't leave just yet. Someone might try to take a hostage, or some such. And besides we're no rangers. But we have sent robots out. Most are gone now, save for a few we may need later, but they discovered something very interesting. A lake just outside the airfield."

"What, you need water?"

"We have plenty of water," Pearl said, standing up. She walked up and down the room. Tristram felt compelled to stand up as well. "What we don't have, is what's at the bottom of the lake. A crashed fighter bomber."

"A... bomber? Like a plane?"

"Yes."

"What the hell do you want a plane for?"

"We plan to fly."

"That's madness."

"Is it? There were smaller aircraft when we got here. They didn't work but we tinkered. With those parts, and everything around here, we can get her humming. We will one day leave this place, I'm sure of it. But until then we need protection. Our missile supply is low and when it runs dry, someone may try to breach the gates in greater numbers than a fistful of pistols can handle. We need the bomber."

Tristram's remained stationary, mouth agape. Her plan was ambitious, but ultimately a pipe dream. "But how?" Shandy asked. "The man hours... it would take hundreds of hours just to learn to fly."

"We have all the time in the world."

"That's not what you said a minute ago."

"... and working flight simulators in the hangar. We've thought this through."

"Do you have any Nuka Cola?"

Pearl fetched the cold drink from a fridge in a nearby shack while he waiting and thought things over. The Boomers had no use for his books, but they were safe here and they would take them, if he somehow retrieved a massive multi-ton aeroplane from the bottom of a radioactive lake. Otherwise they would show him the door. At least he would get that courtesy, more than he could say for anyone else.

But nothing stopped them from shooting him in his sleep, poisoning him perhaps. It seemed far-fetched. The Boomers liked to play with fire, but killing a man in cold blood did not seem like their way. At least not him. Not now.

They wouldn't hold him at gun point, though if he refused the offer they might send him to hell as he walked away from the gates, afraid he would tell of their location, or that he would take the bomber for himself or some other group.

He considered the possibility. The Enclave had better chances of restoring it than anyone in Boomtown ever could – if the Enclave even wanted it. He thought of Nightwolf's ancestors, taking power at the end of the biggest stick. Even in a power vacuum of the wastes, not everyone would bend the knee without a fight. The bomber was the stick. Perhaps the biggest around town.

Pearl returned through the open door. Tristram took the cold, perspiring glass bottle from her hand and removed the cap on the edge of the table. He drank the sweet, sugary Cola and forgot about his troubles until it was empty.

He slammed the bottle on the table. "Right then. So you want me to bring it up how?"

"I've talked with Daniel in the hangar. He has small, self-inflating packs that you can attach to the wings of the plane. You press a remote switch, like a detonator, and the packs expand." She raised her hands up in the air like some ominous rising mushroom cloud. "And the bomber floats on the surface of the lake. We get the remaining robots and a few brave men to haul it across some logs. I can have them chopping the wood within the hour."

"I get your plane, you make a library and hold my books. Like you, I won't live forever. Be good to them. Do what needs to be done."

"Of course. We are as mayflies, you and I. Vault 42 shares your vision. The number 42 will become the symbol of the old world making its way to the new. Don't worry."

The next few days were spent preparing. He was given quarters in a long, tunnel-shaped building among rows of other identical ones not far from the back of the hangar. The Boomers were friendly, every young boy and girl, each old man and woman eager to ask questions about the capital wasteland. Some truths he told them, others he concealed. A courtesy he had not granted to the Overseer of Vault 101.

There were farms on the outer edges near the gates, on the side of the mountain ranges where there was less danger of people trying to cut through the gate. They were almost impossible to traverse. It rained while he was there. The dirt turned black and muddy, clinging to his boots while he was inspecting farms with a young man holding a sickle. They had a small amount of cattle to tend to, but the population had remained steady for the past few decades.

People said this or that about the traveller, but most seemed to like him. They scoured over his books. A select few inquisitive young girls wearing tiny eye glasses were particularly eager to read over them, a fan of the fantasy stories. They were often seen in dark corners of the buildings around the airfield, reading furtively day and night.

The love of reading was behind their glasses, and it made Tristram glad. He had made the correct choice. It was good.


	25. Chapter 25

25

Leaving his bags behind and equipped with a re-breather and oxygen tank, he left the airfield and veered wide left. A small stream led to the lake. He was surprised at how clear and clean the lake was.

Stripping off everything but his undergarments, he waded waist deep into the cold water, putting on the mask and tasting rubber. He pulled goggles down over his eyes, then put the tank on his back and fastened the straps.

Everything was quiet and calm. Ripples spread across the surface, bursting into life and disappearing all the time. He could have almost been on a holiday, if such a thing still existed. He shivered. Leaving the packs and the detonator by the shore he submerged. First he thought it best to catch a glimpse of this beast, to make sure it was still there.

The lake was deep, extending down for what seemed like forever. In actuality it was only a short way, but Tristram was not a strong swimmer – the wasteland didn't necessitate that anyone had to be. Among the reeds and rocks was a slim, rusting length of tube that looked like something futuristic from a comic book. Good condition. Even the wings were only missing small chunks and strips of metal. There was no longer a propeller, snapped off and broken somewhere. That would take a long time to rectify. Satisfied, he drifted to the top, wishing for a pair of flippers on his feet.

The bomber was no great threat even for how well it had stood against time. It would be decades before the Boomers could dream of doing anything with it, hundreds of hours needed to master flight and no one alive that could teach them. An Enclave vertibird would be one thing, but a plane was a whole different ball game.

On the surface he found himself in the middle of the body of water. He removed the re-breather on his face and floated on his back for a short time, as best he could with the weight of the tank. The sky was clear. The wind now felt refreshing on his drenched face.

As he paddled close to the shore where he had left his belongings, an odd shape took form. An ugly blue thing, like a shark that had learned to walk on two feet, tall as a man, with great hulking claws. Its face was flat and hidden inside a hard shell. A Mirelurk: as homely as a mule's butt to look at, but deadly too.

"Hey!" he shouted, voice echoing around the valley. "Piss off!"

The Mirelurk turned. It was near the equipment, Tristram's pistol included. The Mirelurk waded into the water, picking up speed and heading toward him. Tristram was not good with Mirelurks.

He diagonal, away from the creature fast as his inexperience allowed, headed for shore. The Mirelurk trailed, snapping at his heels. Shandy scrambled up the edge of the lake and made a dash. Taking the pistol from the holster resting on his shirt, he turned and fired.

The optimal place to fire at a Mirelurk was at the face. The problem is the face is concealed in a thin hole, surrounded on both sides by tough, ornery shell. It was like trying to shoot a disgruntled tortoise in the head for some reason.

Shots rang out. One flew high, one hit low, almost bouncing off its skin and the third hit the face. It shrieked but did not back down. Tristram stumbled back to escape the swing of its claws, ready to cut through his ageing bones, and fell back on the parachute packs that would be used for floating the bomber. If he lived to use them. He hit the dirt.

Gun still in hand, he held on tight and fired the remaining bullets. Enough hit the sweet spot for the mutant to lurch forward, collapsed, knocking the wind out of him as it landed. It was cold and slimy and generally eww.

Tristram wriggled out from underneath and turned to lay face down in the dirt, breathing hard and coughing.

"You son of a bitch," he wheezed.

When the sun was a little higher in the sky and he had recovered, Tristram picked up a pack and strapped it to his back. The lake was deep, but no so deep as he needed the tank, necessarily. If he stuck to the surface until he was directly above the target, he could attach one at a time, then come back for another. He would be done by nightfall.

But Mirelurks do not generally live alone. Low visibility meant certain death from a surprise attack. Then he would say goodbye to an arm or leg. An arm of leg if he was lucky.

Slowly, one by one, he attached the little care packages to the wings of the plane, including the smaller ones near the tail. The sun began to set, bringing with it cold, as if the water itself was not bad enough after extended periods of time. Tristram was coated in a thin layer of sludge. His chest was sore, as if he had just run from one end of the wastes to the other.

With the last one attached he headed back. He traced a finger over the square red button on the trigger. Perfect timing. No one would come by at night, if anyone ever came by here at all, so no one would discover the prize. They probably couldn't even see it in the pitch black. In the morning the Boomers would send out their robots and people to haul the plane in. Minimal risk. He wondered if they had ever seen a Mirelurk or super mutant before.

No sound from under the water reached him, but he spied bubbles in the centre of the lake. The plane exploded from the water like it was taking off, like an Enclave helicopter from a secret underwater base. It sank a way, then came back up again, bobbing up and down until it eventually settled, water falling from its long slender shape. With the wind it might drift a way, but that was no problem. In fact the Boomers would count on that to make the job easier.

When they weren't getting robots to do their work for them the Boomers were no strangers to physical labour. It would take them no time at all. The rest, however, would take an age.

Tristram collected his things, reloaded the pistol, and headed back shivering, either from cold, or something else.


	26. Chapter 26

The Final Chapter

* * *

><p>Tristram coughed, standing up on a ridge and watching the sun set. His body was bruised and broken from years of suffering and fighting for survival. It was rare for someone in the wastes to live as long as him, and he would soon be at his end. He knew it. Thinking of Dr. Strangelove, along with everyone else he met on his journey from a young soul to an old one, he was at peace with it.<p>

But the world did not care. It turned on all the same. The oceans of the Earth ebbed and flowed and many natural things survived. Perhaps there was even a jungle left somewhere, so full of life. Above, the stars turned, the cosmos indifferent to Earth and Tristram, and whether either of them would survive and what would happen when they died.

He wished he could see the stars. He never took the time to look at and appreciate them. He once read in a book that all we ever see of stars are their old photographs. Something to do with the speed of light. He wondered if some of those stars were long dead. Tonight, he would be sure to look up in awe at the moon and contemplate it like a piece of art.

A clump of dirt in his right hand slipped through his fingers like sand in an hourglass. Soon it would be time for him to leave the airfield.

A hand grasped his shoulder. He turned to see Gough. "Hello, Tristram." Gough was medium-sized and medium built. He had been lifting crude weights lately, giving more definition to his muscles. When Tristram, no stranger to the gym in his younger days, asked why, Gough told him that it was mainly to attract lady Boomers. He laughed at that – similar to his own reasons when he was younger, and chalked it up to survival in any way you looked at it.

"Hello Gough. What are you doing out here?"

"I like to walk the grounds of the airfield. See what's up. We're finished, Tristram."

"Finished?"

"The bomber is completed," Gough said. A wide smile spread across his face. He looked like a Megaton kid on Christmas.

"Does this mean I can go into the hangar now? I haven't seen it in so long," Tristram said. Since the bomber from the lake had been hauled in, only a select few people were allowed in to the hangar. A shame, because Tristram would be unable to sabotage it. Sweet, sweet duplicity. But one night a year ago he lay in bed, unable to sleep, and began to think about it. There was no point, he realised. The Boomers were harmless, even with a weapon like a fighter bomber, because it had no pilot. Only as dangerous as a gun with no trigger man. A tool but not a weapon.

"Not yet. But you can see soon. Very soon."

Tristram's face remained still, unconcerned. He looked over at the horizon and the setting sun. They stood just inside the borders of Boomtown. The fence ran nearby. "We have tests to run. I need to get on the radio. Goodbye Tristram." Gough turned and left.

"Bye."

"And Tristram," he said, not looking back at him. Tristram still focused his eyes on the dusk. "We're strong now, thanks to you. The 42 is our flag. Our symbol. A sign that we'll survive by branching out one day and spreading the message. Pearl understood that. I know you will too. Thank you for the books. The ones about aerodynamics and engineering you say came from Vault Tec were particularly useful." Tristram had forgotten. Vault Tec. Still, it would be inconsequential. The idea was dismissed. What could they really do with those books? Not enough to fully operate a full-sized plane. Ridiculous.

A puppy from nowhere trotted up to him and sat as his feet. His name was Captain, born just after Tristram's trip to the lake. Pearl had taken a liking to dogs, as there were none in vault 42. Captain was a German Shepard. Tristram had always liked those. He liked all dogs. So simple to understand and such good companions. They sat there, a man and a dog, and just looked at everything, in that moment living a simple existence.

A deep humming came from somewhere behind him. He turned, but Boomtown was far, and he was unable to see. Captain took off running, back towards Boomtown. Towards home. One minute later, the plane was airborne, deafening, flying over his head. And with that the world had begun again.

Perhaps all the suffering would be gone. The generations of nothing and the nothing that they eventually amounted to. All the effort of human history, whatever it was for, had birthed the wasteland. And the return of the ability to wipe out all life. There it was, flying over the horizon, a great big '42' crudely painted near the cockpit, a pilot with hours of virtual reality training, and a warped vision of what the number meant to someone else long ago. Tristram sat down and crossed his legs. He covered his face with his old hands, and cried.


End file.
